010-013_EM_AugSep05_ES 18/7/05 3:48 pm Page 10

ww

w.ie

e.or

g/m

gtLEAN

Lean practices, which primarily involve theelimination of all non-essential waste, werefirst adopted by the automobile manufacturingindustry but have since been adopted by otherindustries in manufacturing and beyond.Smiths Aerospace started its ‘lean journey’ in

the late 1990s, and did so for three compelling reasons.Firstly, the US aerospace industry had been taking noticeof lean since the results of the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology (MIT) study which shook the automobileindustry. Indeed, the Womack and Jones study resulted inthe now famous best-selling management book ‘TheMachine that Changed the World’, which was followed in1996 by ‘Lean Thinking’.

Secondly, the US government’s Department of Defense– also stunned by the study’s findings – wished to see itssuppliers adopt so-called ‘lean practices’ (it was at this timethat defence spending had started to fall along with theBerlin Wall). Lastly, a number of key personnel in the UK,including Smiths Aerospace’s managing director, MichaelJones, had also noted how lean was transforming otherindustries.

GOING LEANThe UK Lean Aerospace Initiative commenced in 1998,initially set up as an academic study between Cranfield,Warwick, Bath and Nottingham universities to report onthe potential for lean in aerospace. The study quicklybecame an industry-led programme (through the Society ofBritish Aerospace Companies, SBAC) with defined outputsand deliverables that resulted in the rapid dissemination of‘best practice’ and ‘lean’ knowledge throughout the UKaerospace sector.

So successful was the programme that, in late 1999, theUK government supported a £6.5m project to establish a 12-strong practical implementation team to deliversustainable improvements to the industry, in particularsmall businesses. This programme was modelled on thehighly successful automotive Industry Forum.Journey to

Grouping people by project ratherthan discipline reduced the classiclean waste ‘unnecessary motion’where engineers and informationwere moving to and frounnecessarily. Here a hardwaredesign engineer works yards awayfrom the production team andlocated close by are softwareengineers, programme managementand manufacturing engineering.

10 IEE Engineering Management | August/September 2005

Operational management

010-013_EM_AugSep05_ES 18/7/05 3:48 pm Page 11

Mik

e W

ater

s

Jon

Bev

an

Mike Waters and Jon Bevan fromSmiths Aerospace recount how thetransatlantic aerospace equipmentcompany, with its 12,000 personnel, went ‘lean’

‘Going lean’ was not, however, an overnight transitionfor Smiths Aerospace, or indeed any of its peers, and thephilosophies and practices had to be embraced bymanagement in the first instance. In Smiths Aerospace’scase it began by studying the latest literature on lean andthen conducting training courses (lean boot-camps) for itssenior management.

The boot-camps took the form of two-day workshops inwhich senior managers were not only introduced, throughsimulations and exercises, to the basic principles of leanbut also challenged on their leadership skills and strategies.The boot camps therefore attained ‘buy-in’ at the highestlevels of management within business – which wasessential as lean requires considerable managementcommitment in order for it to succeed.

At the same time, teams within Smiths Aerospace andthe UK-based consultancy LAI started runningimprovement events called ‘master classes’ to solve realprocess problems. These master classes tended to use atechnique called value stream mapping (VSM) as a startingpoint so that the root causes of waste could be identified.VSM requires the mapping of product value streams, fromorder taking through to fulfilment, including all the indirectprocesses (of which design and development are but two).VSM quickly led Smiths Aerospace to identify its hithertohidden non-manufacturing wastes.

IDENTIFYING AND REMOVING WASTEBecause lean is underpinned by several ‘continuousimprovement’ practices, it was realised early on that thebest course of action would be to implement lean on arelatively new programme, and Smiths Aerospace opted forJSF (Joint Strike Fighter), on which work had started in1999. To this end, the functional heads of engineering(including hardware, systems, software and mechanical)worked with those providing support roles (including thechange management teams and technical publications) touse JSF as a pilot programme.

One of the wastes identified was with regard to howpeople and resources were being managed within thecompany. More than 70 people of different disciplines(mainstream engineering and support functions) wereneeded for the JSF programme. It would have been normal

practice for some of these people to have worked in theirfunctional areas. For example, the reliability,maintainability and testability (RM&T) engineers wouldhave worked in a department of RM&T engineers allworking on different projects.

When analysed, it was clear that segregating engineersby discipline was creating the classic lean waste ‘unnecessarymotion’, with engineers and information moving to and frounnecessarily. The lack of easy access to key people willimpede any programme, so for JSF the different engineeringand support disciplines were co-located in one area.

Another waste was identified when the lean teamdiscovered that most engineers within the company werespending surprisingly little of their time focusing on theircore competencies. The rest of their time was being spenton lower-level administrative and engineering tasks. Forexample, Smiths Aerospace (Electronic Systems) hasaround 90 software design engineers. On the JSFprogramme, when they were not designing and craftingcode, the software engineers were expected to address low-level module testing of the code – something that could havebeen outsourced and, in fact, that now is outsourced on allnon-classified programmes.

DESIGN AND INFORMATION REUSEWith the majority of its projects and programmes, SmithsAerospace has to generate maintenance manuals, whichinclude detailed illustrations. These illustrations were – dueto different standards requirements and someincompatibility between engineering design and technicalpublication’s tools – being redrawn; a time consumingactivity and one which introduced the possibility of errors.Accordingly, the tools and drawing standards wereharmonised for JSF, saving the business several man weeksof unnecessary effort.

Another waste was identified when it was discoveredthat company procedures at the time also demanded thatgoods-inwards be issued with a full set of drawings in orderto inspect the build quality of (outsourced) mechanicalcomponents. The company had for some time been issuingits suppliers with CAD/CAM files and it was only becauseof goods-inwards’ requirements that full drawing sets wereprinted at all. ➔

IEE Engineering Management | August/September 2005 11

010-013_EM_AugSep05_ES 18/7/05 3:48 pm Page 12

ww

w.ie

e.or

g/m

gt

Since the discovery of the latter waste, goods-inwards isnow equipped with only the minimum set of drawings inorder to inspect delivered products. Furthermore,procedures are to be put in place that will ensure supplierscan only deliver conforming products and SmithsAerospace will be able to reduce goods-inwards’ inspectionrequirements. This lean practice will be a move towards thecompany’s long-term goal of ‘drawing-less mechanicalcomponents procurement’.

DESIGN PROCESS WASTESAerospace programmes and projects are rife with designreviews, conducted to ensure the integrity of the productsproduced. Prior to going lean, Smiths Aerospace used toconduct design review meetings, for which the attendeeshad done little, if any, review work before the meeting. Amaster class revealed this to be inefficient, particularly as,by doing the actual reviews at the meetings, designproblems were being flagged which could have been spottedmuch earlier. In short, the meetings were more focused onidentifying and discussing problems than reviewing andimplementing solutions.

The new, lean, order dictates that all attendees shouldreview material and documents prior to the meetings. Thishas resulted in shorter and more productive meetings andhas also reduced the number of meetings held.

As mentioned earlier, implementing lean intoengineering has been a case of interpreting what hadbeen learned from the world of manufacturing. One spin

The project control boards have removed the need to write andcirculate the vast majority of in-house reports. Project managersand team leaders are responsible for updating their parts of theboard by posting clear information about where the project isand where it needs to be.

12 IEE Engineering Management | August/September 2005

on how the design review meetings have been improvedwould be to say that quality control has replaced qualityassurance.

REDUCTION OF DUPLICATED EFFORTTest and verification is understandably a key part of whatany aerospace company should be doing to deliver safe andreliable product. However, it is all too easy to over-test. Itwas found that many of the functional tests performed bythe hardware engineers were then repeated by the softwareengineers. Moreover, many of the tests performed by bothcamps were then repeated by the systems engineers.

The reason for the duplication was that, while designshave always been developed with a top-down approach,pre-lean the testing was being done bottom-up, mainlybecause each engineering group wanted to fully testeverything it was responsible for. With JSF, acomprehensive test strategy was developed, one based onthe classic ‘V’ development lifecycle as shown in fig 1.

CHANGING THE WAY CHANGES ARE DONEWhen Smiths Aerospace analysed the time it took to get adesign change through the ‘system’, it was rather surprisedto discover the average was 15 days from receipt of a fullyapproved change request document through toimplementation of the changes to drawings, bill ofmaterials (BOM) files, documentation and so on. Further,because several people were authorised to raise a change,it was felt that there were too many uncoordinated changes,some that were changes to changes that had not yet flowedthrough the system.

The lean solution was to acknowledge the continuingneed for changes but to conduct them through formalchange boards. To this end, change requests now leaveprojects in reviewed batches, as opposed to drip-feeding tothe change management team.

The Smiths Aerospace change management team at theBishops Cleeve, Cheltenham facility comprises eight people.Pre-lean, these individuals had different areas of expertise(e.g. BOMs), which meant some changes could not be dealtwith during their absence. Also, a batch of certain types ofchange might have meant some team members wereinundated with work while their colleagues had less to do.

All team members are now multidisciplinary, whichmeans change requests are dealt with as soon as they arrive.In the words of the widely recognised definitions of a leanorganisation: “Work flows freely through the business tothe beat of the customer’s demand” and “People work inself-managed, cross-functional, flexible teams to deliver aset of clear targets”.

Since embracing lean practices, the time taken to fullyimplement a change request has been reduced to fiveworking days. Moreover, this reduction has been made by

Operational management

010-013_EM_AugSep05_ES 18/7/05 3:48 pm Page 13

Concurrent generation of test requirements at each level

D

E

S

I

G

N

T

E

S

T

Customeracceptancetesting

Performancespecification

Acceptancetestspecification

System levelrequirements

System testspecification

Integrationtesting

High leveldesign

Unit testspecifications Unit testing

Detailedlevel design

Module testspecifications

Moduletesting

Implementation Review criteria

Implementationreviews

Fig 1: Development lifecycle showing concurrent testdevelopmentThe left arm of the descending V represents the decomposition ofthe requirements into the high-level and detailed designs, fromwhich the lowest system components (hardware and softwaremodules) are created. The ascending right arm of the Vrepresents the test and verification activities that prove thedesign at each stage, moving up to the proving of the designagainst the customer specification.

When faced with ever-decreasing development timescales,there is a natural tendency to rush into the descent of the lefthand portion of the V development cycle and worry about testlater.

On JSF, Smiths Aerospace ensured that ‘how to test’ wasaddressed at each level of design before moving down to thelower level activities. This ensured that the development produceda testable product at all stages in the lifecycle and reduced anyrework required at a later stage.

making better use of the current paper-and-signaturesystem, which has been in place for decades. Soon,managing change requests will employ electronicsignatures and a faster, paperless methodology should resultin even quicker implementation of changes.

WHY GO LEAN?Why did Smiths Aerospace go lean? Answer: to reducedevelopment timescales and costs and to use its highly-skilled people in a more effective manner. However, SmithsAerospace is only part way through its lean journey asthere is always scope for continuous improvement withinany organisation, no matter how efficient current processesare thought to be.

The JSF project is proving to be a good pilot for ‘leanthinking’ in a development environment, and the principlesof lean have been proven to apply to non-manufacturingareas just as much as the traditional lean implementationtarget of the factory floor.

In fact, the most difficult challenge Smiths Aerospaceand other lean thinking companies have had to overcomewas a cultural problem: “Lean does not apply to my workarea!” Wrong, because whatever you do, you can always doit ‘more lean’. ■

Mike Waters is projects director, JSF, and Jon Bevan isbusiness improvement manager in Smiths Aerospace’sElectronic Systems division in Cheltenham, UK

IEE Engineering Management | August/September 2005 13