Scaling new heights

Source: Technology Digital

Date :7/16/2007 3:30:46 PM

Cirrus Design is embracing lean operational processes as it soars to the top spot in piston-driven airplanes

By James Buchanan

For any business there are a number of elements that must come together to ensure the smooth flow and management of the company’s operations.

And no matter how large or small the company, operations is the engine room — the heart of the organization, where value is produced and derived from the businesses products and services.

For some companies this is a fairly straightforward idea: make and sell more widgets. To others, though, operations are the convergence point for a number of elements that all must be successfully managed.

There is perhaps no other industry where so many elements must work fluidly as in personal aircraft sales and manufacturing.

“Some people would argue that these types of personal aircraft are dangerous, uncomfortable and slow, which may have been true years back, but Cirrus has changed all of that,” says Dr. Tom Bartoe, VP of operations for Cirrus Design. “Our planes are much faster and more comfortable; flying one of our planes is sort of like driving a Lexus compared to a Volkswagen. We also include advanced avionics packages, which makes our planes safer.”

According to Bartoe, Cirrus is the designer and manufacturer of the best selling piston driven personal aircraft in the country, outpacing Cessna in the first quarter of fiscal year 2007.

Further, while Cessna delivers its planes to dealers, says Bartoe, Cirrus is a factory direct manufacturer. He adds that attracting these customers to Cirrus requires a regional and international sales force.

On the international side, the company focuses on two regions. The first is Europe, which also includes Africa; and the second is Asia, which includes Australia and some of the Pacific island nations.

In the U.S., the company has divided its sales force to service four regions.

Bartoe says that when a potential customer expresses interest in one of its planes the person is welcome to come to the factory for a tour, or the company will send out a demonstrator in a company plane to provide whatever information the customer would need. The customer is also able to take a test flight.

“We want to provide our customers with an informed opportunity to learn as much about our airplanes and company as we can,” he says. “After all, purchasing one of our planes is a half-million dollar investment and we want our customers to feel very well cared for when buying one of our planes.”

Once a customer decides to buy a plane, they are provided with pilot transition training where they are trained on all aspects of their new plane.

“Building familiarity with the aircraft is also one of the ways we enhance the safety of the planes we sell,” says Bartoe. “After three days of training they are free to go and if their plane is ready they are able to fly it from the factory just as you would when buying a car. We have our own airstrip.”

The company also seeks to increase its customer base through drawing more people toward aviation.

“We want to grow aviation in general, so there is enough room for all of us that are competing,” says Bartoe. “We don’t want to put anyone out of business; we would rather grow aviation and the number of people who want to be involved in it.”

After a customer purchases a plane, the company also offers lifetime training, which includes instrument flying, flying in icing conditions, and other piloting techniques and skills. Again, says Bartoe, this is designed to enhance safety.

“These are well qualified, Cirrus certified flight instructors,” he says. “We offer a total package. We are able to get a customer their license, a plane, and finance it for them because we want to make owning and flying a plane as user friendly an experience as is possible.”

The company also offers its own unique safety feature called CAPS (Cirrus Airframe Parachute System), which is a parachute for the plane. According to Bartoe, there have been 14 deployments, which have saved 22 lives.

“These incidents have occurred primarily in icing and foul weather conditions,” he adds.

On the manufacturing side, the company has a number of planes it can sell to a customer right off the showroom floor, so-to-speak. However, the company can customize the planes with varying types of interiors, color schemes, and avionics packages. Producing one of these planes takes approximately four to six weeks.

“We produce four airplanes every day, and this year we expect to do about 750, and 800 or so for next year,” says Bartoe. “We have a lot of people who want a more custom-built plane, and to them a six week wait for that is more than reasonable.”

The company is also a big believer in lean manufacturing principles.

“We have worked hard over the last four to five years to automate our production processes in order to be able to get four or five planes built each day,” he says. “We could double that production too, if the market was there for it.”

The process, says Bartoe, is similar to an automobile manufacturer. Every 2.5 hours there is a position move denoted by the sounding of a buzzer.

Technology plays a big role for the company, as it has to manufacture with mathematically defined precision. For example, the airframe and wings have to be precision tooled to precisely-defined dimensional tolerances.

Bartoe says the company’s new wing is so precisely designed and manufactured that “it makes the flight characteristics very comfortable for the people that fly our planes.”

Since the company is in a Federal Aviation Administration regulated industry, it has to have documentation showing the company has precisely controlled its production processes.

To do this, Cirrus relies on an enterprise computer integrated system for all of its business functions. Bartoe says the company is moving toward a paperless system and is approximately 60 percent toward achieving that goal.

He goes on to add that the company barcodes the fiberglass parts that go into the manufacture of each airplane, which helps the company move toward a higher degree of data capture. A barcode is inlaid in the fiberglass parts of the plane, which can preserve data specific to the manufacture and life of the plane.

The company is also working on interfacing the avionics packages to develop data storage and acquisition in a whole range of categories.

Obviously, managing its relationship with the FAA has to be a big part of the company’s process.

Rather than go to the FAA for approvals that are routinely required during the manufacture of the planes, the company has the FAA come to them. In particular, says Bartoe, there are a number of FAA representatives at the manufacturing site that are employees of the FAA, but whose wages are paid for by Cirrus.

These FAA representatives operate within three designations. Design Authority Representatives (DAR) work with the company’s design team; Designated Engineering Representatives (DER) work with the engineering department; and Designated Manufacturing Inspections Representatives (DMIR) work within the manufacturing process.

In all, these FAA representatives work locally to the company and can make decisions on behalf of the FAA regarding routine and relatively minor changes to the engineering and design of the planes, says Bartoe.

“Otherwise, the FAA would not have the resources to sustain our operations and support us,” he says. “They make hundreds of decisions everyday, and when the plane is completed they hang the tag on it designating its air worthiness. We would not be able to live without these people residing here.”

The company also spends quite a bit of its time on R&D through its Advanced Design Group.

“We are constantly developing and updating what we do, which means that we iterate on what we do every year,” says Bartoe. “We are able to take innovative ideas and roll them into production very quickly.”

The latest and greatest development of the company is the upcoming release of its jet engine driven personal aircraft – the CirrusJet, Bartoe says.

According to Bartoe the jet will likely cost $1 million. The company is offering current Cirrus piston-driven plane owners the opportunity to purchase a place holder for a jet at $100,000.

“These are people who already spent half a million dollars on a piston powered plane, so they can make this kind of investment, and they recognize the quality of our company and know this plane is going to be something special,” he says.

Details of the plane, he adds, will be released this month.