Engineering
Engineering sustainable, measurable change
Throughout our 25-year history, we’ve helped engineering groups within aerospace and transportation companies to achieve better results. Whether the need is to redesign processes and systems outdated after rapid growth or to address challenges with design reliability, our operations improvement professionals can you help understand the issues affecting engineering performance and develop a plan to implement change.
Experience
Our engineering experience includes work for leading aerospace and transportation companies around the globe. During these projects, we have implemented action plans such as:
- Developed and deployed a customized Stage Gate Engineering process that aligned time phased design tasks to deliver vehicle fully compliant to Federal Department of Transportation requirements.
- Developed a design analysis process to screen, control, evaluate and approve structural design content of cars altered by customer requirements, usage or railroad environment changes.
- Re-aligned and rewrote the Engineering process procedures (30) to establish auditable documentation that complied with regulatory requirements.
- Streamlined and simplified a multi-corporate acquisition legacy system for engineering change control that enhanced the process, clarified procedures, and adjusted organizational roles resulting in less paperwork, better control and clearer accountability.
- Assisted management in the full deployment of the concurrent engineering process across 21 product lines and 6 manufacturing plants.
- Developed and implemented archival management strategies and processes for ”as built” histories, vendor drawings and the structural “record of type” in support of design, warranty reviews and litigation.
- Developed a Customer Information database tool that created access to all pertinent customer technical specifications and requirements by Freight Car type.
- Implemented a System For Managing in Engineering to insure that the correct drawings are released on schedule, allowing operations to complete its work with minimal delay.
- Developed a new Planning process, allowing for alignment with baseline Engineering planning and removing the need for ad hoc, on-the-floor production planning for each individual aircraft.
- Redesigned the Kitting of Materials process, eliminating non-valued direct labor activities by providing materials to the aircraft production team in required amounts and on time; also eliminated lost and damaged materials.
- Implemented a new Production Control process that aligns activities across production shops, insuring that the right things are built when required.
- Designed and implemented an integrated Master Schedule, which was the key element that tied all of the efforts together, providing the pacing for the planning, kitting and staging of production. Implemented Systems For Managing in the shops and at the executive level to support the integrated Master Schedule.
Results
Our aerospace and transportation clients have realized measurable and sustainable results, including:
- Developed the product consolidation strategy to reduce structural diversity and maintenance of design.
- Implemented reliability control measures reducing reliability risks from unproven designs.
- Reduced initial warranty cost per line shipped by more than 17%.
- Achieved full compliance to federal audit requirements.
- Reduced hours per aircraft at an annual rate of $11.99 million (based upon a level of fifty aircraft per year).
- Reduced cycle time, allowing for additional margins of $3.2 million per year per aircraft.
