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model has effectively captured the scope of the
operation,” says Andy Marshall, the engineer
responsible for building the simulation. “The model
provides a good overall view of factory life at the
same time that it gives us a perspective on the
more detailed phases of our process. In this
respect, it has proven beneficial to both high-level
management and the dozens of small engineering
teams focused on specific areas of the operation.”
How beneficial? WITNESS helped save Airbus $1.8
million with one upper management decision alone.
Airbus was considering an $8 million crane system
to transfer work around the huge facility. WITNESS
showed them how a $6.2 million system could do
the job. Says Marshall: “WITNESS served its
purpose with that single decision.”
Of course, there have been hundreds of smaller
decisions at the engineering team level that have
also proven the value of simulation. In one
instance, WITNESS showed Airbus engineers how
they could use four $750,000 laser tracking units as
measuring devices, instead of the ten they originally
thought they would need. With all the different
operations that would be using the laser tracking
units, there were periods where airbus work could
keep ten machines busy. But there were other
times where none of them would be in use. “We
explored different workflow scenarios in WITNESS
and came up with a way to handle the workload by
using only four tracking units,” Marshall explains.
“At a $750,000 apiece, that’s a significant saving.”
Getting started with the simulation project
Marshall began developing the WITNESS model of
the A380 wing production process in the summer of
2001, before Airbus broke ground on the
construction of the facility. The purpose of using
simulation was to conduct preproduction analysis
not only on the process flow of the A380 wings but
also on the physical layout of the plant.
Manufacturing companies typically rely on WITNESS
to analyze process flow; the software is used less
often for facility layout—and it’s rare for companies
to rely on WITNESS, like Airbus does, to drive firstdraft
conceptual design of a plant.
Then again, Airbus is one of the more advanced
WITNESS users. Jim Cruise, the veteran simulation
specialist at Airbus, has been using WITNESS for
fifteen years. At the time that the A380 modeling
project came up, Cruise was working on simulations
for four different production lines. Marshall was
brought on board to have a simulation modeler
focused exclusively on the west factory facility.
Amazingly, given how complex and extensive the
model needed to be, it was the first simulation
model Marshall ever built. Airbus took him off the
shop floor and Jim Cruise got him up to speed on
WITNESS with Lanner’s training assistance.
In the project’s early days, there were several
teams of experts focused on various areas of
Since A380 wings are manufactured with their leading
edge pointing up, a six-story building is required to
house the structural wing assembly area.
www.lanner.com
Airbus
Aerospace
Facility Layout Optimization
Multi-Million $ Savings
CASE STUDY
production within the facility. The first order of
business was to link these teams together in a
single process flow model so that management
could gain a better understanding of whether the
overall process would meet the facility’s production
goal of four pairs of A380 wings per month. One of
the challenges Marshall faced then—and continues
to face today—is building a model that reflects the
immediate production activity while accommodating
future demands. “At the moment, we’re at low-rate
production, moving A380 wings between production
stages every two or three months,” Marshall
explains. “Certain issues only manifest themselves
at full production, when we’re moving wings around
our facility nearly every day. My challenge is to
build a model that can look ten years down the
road. And the challenge for the engineering teams
is to think about the impact their decisions have on
the future of the facility.”
Detailing the A380 wing production process
From the initial process flow model that was
developed in 2001, Marshall has added more and
more detail to the simulation, including information
on both the ground-based production activities and
the crane system that transports parts between the
various phases of the operation.
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