| Aircraft manufacturing schedule management is a complex and compositive systems as well as the aircraft itself and accompanied manufacturing. Consequently, aircraft manufacturing management is challengeable for all aircraft manufacturers and suppliers involved. In the light of catching the decided manufacturing schedule, the duration and progress of each element of manufacturing become essential and critical for the management level. However, aircraft manufacturing may involves thousands of departments, suppliers and corresponding human resources to be harmonized with limited cost in a relatively short term. The conflicts between manufacturing drivers (such as resources, cost, time, and etc.) are inevitable and to be solved by the program managers. In this research, the new regional airliner ARJ21 program is selected as the research object to identify and resolve existing and potential problems in the current extensive project schedule and schedule management system, and then the standardized multi-tier project schedule system and progress management system are raised for complex large-scale programs.At beginning of this paper, the ARJ21 program in SAC is introduced and analyzed to provide an overview and present the conventional aircraft manufacturing schedule management pattern; then the key issues, difficulties, and challenges are identified consequently. For the entire process of aircraft development, there are typical charactoristics and life cycle. In general, material procurement, preparation, detail fabrication, assembly, flight test, and adjustment are essential for an aircraft project. However, the market is becoming more and more competitive and challengable as well as the aircraft, including military and commercial, is getting more flexicable, diverse and customized on configuration, function and production volume. All these properties make the time more critical, unsteady and uncertain, which require higher performance, quality, and reliability constantly and make limitation to manufacturing duration. Since the improvement of capability will have a summit, the management system must be reformed to avoid inefficiency caused by various conflicts.As the research achievement, a multi-tier project management system is set up for ARJ21 project in order to systemize, standardize the process and make it information-based. All works will be broken-down by tier and all departments and/or units will be assigned with clear responsibility. As an effective tool for enterprises, schedule is to coordinate all production activities and support the project success. With a proper and practical schedule, all involved departments will be harmonized and all production activities are in order. In fact, schedule is to present all activities with logical relationship on a time line. And the time element is emphasized in the project network plan and tier plans which help to control the time, milestone, and deadline.Normally, the schedule for developing programs comprises project kick-off order, implementation plan, scope definition document, no. 1 flow chart, project master schedule, tier plans, and work plan of specific department (plan in department level). When the project enters mass production phase, the schedule is divided into delivery plan, production start/delivery order, shipset flow chart, process plan, master assembly plan, project master plan, work position plan, and detail production plan; then finally, all department will develop their own plan separately but with coordination of project plan.Thirdly, the practice and measures of the ARJ21 multi-tier schedule management system are presented with consideration of capability balance, real time tracking, and supervising. The monitoring of project schedule, which involves control of cost and quality, is to ensure that the target can be achieved. As aircraft requires higher safety and reliability, quality control is necessary for each individual process. If there is quality problem, the time chain will be split and consequently the impact will be reflected in the schedule. Similarly, cost control is connected with schedule in the light of estimatation management. The purpose of supervising is to provide acceptable products with estimated cost in defined timeline. The target, delivery time and quality standard decide the rules for specific program, and represented by the key element - progress. The program management is to coordinate the conflicts to minimize the influences and achieve the goal.An integrated team is usually used to take the role of control and coordination, which will allocate the resources, define the plan and make decisions for the whole project. All function departments are to support the team by assigning one or more representative in the team.To be simple, project management is to manage the variation because the progress is not what expected before. There are always findings or problems, which will affect the master schedule if not resolved on time, regardless of the quality of plan and management. They can be identified with effective management system before they have actual effects so that enough time and effort can be put to solve.Finally, the practice of schedule management in domestic aircraft manufacturing industries is revealed in certain depth as well as some comments and thinkings are raised. Aircraft manufacturing is a typical high-complexity product and has its charactoristics, for example, the complexity, the variousness, and flexibility which make the management challengeable as well. Due to aforementioned, thework breakdown structure and organization become the key issue for coordinating many tiers. Meanwhile, the format of schedule or plan should be suitable for different objectives in different tiers. The point is to make the task, time and owner clear. Beyond this, any small changes may have great impacts on the master schedule as all processes in the system are dependent upon and linked to each other. However, the engineering changes are inevitable for aircraft, especially for developing products. Defining a baseline for changing during the development period will improve the control and recovering of schedule management.Schedule management for aircraft manufacturing is based on quality and cost of project management greatly. In certain degree, the schedule plan is a resources allocation plan as well. Therefore, the developing and control of plan is to make balance between various drivers and/or elements; and the relevant resources should be assigned appropriately.Concurrent engineering and informatization are beneficial for large-scale program management as all data generated by concurrent engineering need a network system to carry and transfer the information for a flexible production system. And the schedule should be integrated with PDM and CAPP seamlessly.The developing transporter program can learn from existing ARJ21 project since there are similarities on product and process. The experience and lessons obtained from ARJ21 can facilitate the larger airliner. The paper is helpful for other large programs with similar complexity and long term. |
