Chief executive Faury stresses importance of predictability as monthly aircraft output rises.
Airbus has initiated measures to halve instances of quality problems in its production operation over the next year.
Speaking during a briefing in London on 21 July, chief executive Guillaume Faure highlighted last year’s A320neo fuselage panel issue which, he says, “created a lot of disturbances in the system”.
“As we ramp up volumes, and as we produce much more, the regularity and predictability of what we’re doing is really important,” he states.
Better quality, Faury points out, would enable this situation.
Commercial aircraft chief Lars Wagner says the airframer has launched a “quality moonshot” to reduce “non-quality” in its operation by 50% – aiming for a 25% cut this year and the same in 2027.
He puts this effort in the context of projections that Airbus could be delivering some 1,100 aircraft a year by the end of this decade.
“It’s less resources, less rework, more profitability, and a delivery on time,” says Wagner.
“We’re using our support functions to really think about what needs to happen, that we can deliver basically four aircraft a day.”
Wagner says the quality initiative was not started to drive margins, but rather to drive customer satisfaction.
“So it gets back to first-line principles of our people…think about their own accountability when they finish their day-to-day activities,” he states.
“And we’ve seen a lot of issues that happen in the value stream of the aircraft, especially in the final assembly line.
“You just need to react to customer feedback when they take delivery of the aircraft and they mention, ‘I don’t like this’…it needs to be a quality feedback loop back to the supply chain.”
Wagner also points out that there is a safety element associated with quality enhancement.
“It’s really a cultural change, but it’s first-and-foremost [about] shortening lead time, reducing rework, and then focusing on the final delivery date [and the quality] that the customer is expecting,” he adds.
The post Airbus strives to halve quality issues to avoid disrupting production ramp-up first appeared on FlightGlobal.