Government/Military Trends
June 2005
Sourcing of Parts for Aging Aircraft
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“Someone one once told me an aircraft is 17 million parts flying in close formation,” quips Donna Newitt, Director for Government & Defense at IHS, during an interview about a daunting issue, the sourcing of parts for aging aircraft. It is a complex subject that both demands and defies simple answers.
Simplicity is becoming a reality of doing business for aircraft manufacturers. “For example,” says Newitt, “for Boeing, less than a decade ago when they were building the 777, they had 30,000 suppliers…. But now, they use 6,500 suppliers on the 787, the new aircraft that is scheduled for delivery in 2008.” The reduction is partly due to the ability to do less and less of the individual assemblies themselves, adds Newitt, citing the fact that the entire wing on the 787 is being built in Japan by Heavy Industries.
The same drive toward simplicity is necessary in the sourcing of parts for aging aircraft. As diminishing manufacturing sources and material shortages (DMSMS) and obsolescence become the overriding issues, it becomes vital to be able to find and acquire replacement parts and avoid a costly redesign.
Historically, military components were in production for decades, but contemporary commercial and industrial designs are in production for five years or less, and design life spans continue to shrink. It is estimated that 60 percent of today’s integrated circuits will be obsolete in five years. The cost of DMSMS and Obsolescence is pegged at an astonishing $750 million each year.
Obsolescence engineers spend countless hours searching for parts that are no longer available or whose part numbers have become obsolete. Mark Strandquest, Director of Parts Management for IHS Engineering cites a tiered approach for the management of obsolescence that enables engineers to quickly and simply locate and acquire the parts they need to keep the fleet in the air. The process winnows parts management to a four-step progression of establishing a parts list baseline, identifying obsolescence issues, integrating supply chain data, and determining corrective action. It eliminates such trouble spots as outdated part numbers and redundant suppliers. The JCOMMS ePortal, an e-commerce tool, enables engineers to search multiple databases with a single query and find solutions discovered by others who have researched the same problem, and eliminate the need to reinvent a solution, reorder unnecessary parts, or redesign an entire system.
When any one of several million possible parts can keep an aircraft from flying, a proactive stance to obsolescence management can provide some measure of simplification. Information from extensive databases, linking numerous government and commercial sources, and the collaborative experience of the obsolescence community may offer solutions in seconds that might once have required months.