Airbus

CASE: REDESIGNED WORK AT AIRBUS GETS THE A380 OFF THE GROUND

Viewpoint

Manager’s Viewpoint

Statement of the Problem

Incoordination among project team members resulting to delay

Objectives

Must/Short Range

1. To eliminate lack of coordination among project team members

2. To be more efficient in future work process (i.e. cost of rework and delay should not be overlooked)

3. To use advance software in designing projects of the whole organization

Want/Long Range

1. To apply property management/engineering technique for future projects

Areas of Consideration/Analysis

Airbus, an aircraft maker with headquarters in France and manufacturing and assembly facilities throughout Europe, had intended for the A380 to enter service in 2005.The aircraft is a complex piece of engineering, designed to be not only huge (s eating about 550 passengers on two decks) but also the most fluid efficient plane. Producing it would require a great degree of cooperation in a company that had historically been highly decentralized.

When the project got under way, coordination was more difficult than top management had predicted. The problems were especially evident in wiring the aircraft, a project requiring 30,000 cables hidden behind walls to carry electricity to the plane’s cockpit, cargo doors, lighting and even the toilet flushers-everything on the plane requiring electrical power. Test flights in early 2005 showed that wiring needed to be modified, which means that workers on two dozen planes that were already in production would have to make the changes in those planes. Airbus announced that the release of the plane would be delayed by six months.

A year later, engineers in Germany were still struggling to make all the changes to the wiring blueprints. By that point, 20 planes were in inventory in the Hamburg facility with temporary wiring. Airbus announced another six-month delay. Airbus’s CEO put German engineer Rudiger Fuchs in charge of A380...