UPDATE July 1 with Toyota - Embraer is targeting to reduce production lead times of all its products by some forty percent until the end of 2023 to improve efficiency. On the commercial aircraft production lines, lead times have already been reduced from four to three days per aircraft but this will be down to 2.5 days from July. To achieve this, Embraer has partnered with Toyota. Embraer targets 40 percent lower production lead time. Group CEO Francisco Gomes Neto mentioned the reduction target during a presentation on Embraer’s Media Days on May 30 at its Sao Jose dos Campos headquarters, to which AirInsight has been invited. “The reduction in lead times is not just for commercial aircraft but also for business jets and military jets as well. We identified which processes we have to improve to reach this forty percent reduction. Then we started to adjust our operations based on the Kaizen principles to really remove the ‘waste’ to reach this target”, said Gomes Neto. He added: “For example, on landing gears, we have already been able to reduce lead times by forty percent. For the wings, the cables, and wiring, we will be focusing on all the key processes in a very structured and synchronized way to achieve this target of forty percent. Last year, we were able to achieve a reduction of already seventeen percent on average. And this despite all the issues in the supply chain.” The C-390 Millenium multi-role transport aircraft is excluded from the lead time reduction improvements as it has its own production rates, based on the backlog. Fewer movements for technicians One of the production managers explained during a tour of the assembly halls that during the evaluation of all processes, it was identified what adds value and what are inefficiencies or waste that could be deleted or improved. Particularly, improvements were possible in the movement of the technicians to get their tools or parts and the set-up of the infrastructure around the aircraft. All workflow processes and tasks have been measured, analyzed, and improved. “With all these small things together, we have been able to reduce lead time”, he said. With 17.5 percent already achieved, forty percent has been set as an ambitious, yet, realistic target to be reached by 2024. Another step to get there is to be made soon. Instead of performing a task on an aircraft for three days as happens now, from July, an airframe will move to the next assembly station after 2.5 days. This speeds up the overall production flow and opens up options for further production rate increases. Once the latest changes have been implemented, Embraer will be able to produce two aircraft per week or eight per month. The Brazilian airframer said in March that it intends to produce between sixty and seventy aircraft this year, up from 48 in 2021, 44 in 2020 but still well below the 89, 90 in 2018, and even 101 in 2017. A model showing the different workstations in the final assembly building. The airframe arrives at station 1 in the top left. System checks are done at station 2. The engines are fitted in station 3. More checks are done at station 4 before the finished aircraft enters final inspection and is handed over to the flight preparation team. (Richard Schuurman) Touring the facilities The improved efficiency will be immediately visible in the various stages of assembly and final assembly of the aircraft. During the tour of the production facilities, the media was shown a hall where E-jets were in different stages of assembly. In an Air Peace E195-E2, the wiring harnesses and other systems were just being installed (main picture). More installation work was done on a Delta E190 in the next station, with another Delta E190 getting both wings, the horizontal stabilizers, the tailfin, and the landing gear at the third station. While the aircraft moves on the line to the next station, the team of technicians doesn’t move along with the frame. “The airplane moves on, but the team repeats the actions in every fuselage that arrives. That’s the way we train the employees, so they are experts in their fields like electronics, hydraulics”, the production manager explained. The 2.5 days improvement will also be evident further ‘downstream’ in the assembly process. Here, aircraft move from one station to the next in three days now, but this will become every 2.5 days. In building F220, the frames arrive that have been equipped with systems and wings. Here, there are four stations where the cabin interior is installed and more systems are fitted. Wings surfaces and the landing gear are tested at station 2. At station 3, the E-jet receives its engines, although when AirInsight was visiting, all four Delta E190s in the square assembly hall were without engines. This could have to do with supply chain issues at General Electric. During our visit, there was an E190 at the fourth station for additional work. At the so-called IFF station, the fully finished aircraft undergoes a final quality inspection and has all its systems switched on for the first time and is checked before it moves on to the flight preparations team, where the engines are started for the first time. Embraer does just one flight or maturity test per aircraft plus a customer acceptance flight before an aircraft is delivered to a customer. This is in contrast to Boeing and Airbus, which do multiple pre-delivery flights. That there is only one test fight confirms the build quality of Embraer, the production manager says. A maturity flight is always the same that lasts two or three hours. An Alaska Airlines E190 is in the hangar of the flight preparations team for just one maturity test light. (Richard Schuurman) Before a fuselage enters the pre-assembly hall, it is already fully painted. This is done in a dedicated painting hall that consists of four painting bays. Embraer uses robots for washing the fuselage and applying the primer and layer of clear coat, making it unique in the industry. Wings are also painted by robots. Applying a special protective coating inside the fuselage is also done with a robot. Special liveries and graphics are still applied by hand. There are in total three robots in the paint facility. Reducing inventory Part of Embraer's target to reduce production lead time by 40 percent is by optimizing the production system has been achieved by reducing inventory, which also has contributed to a significant reduction in working capital and costs in 2021. Gomes Neto confirmed that the supply chain constraints “isn’t helping us in this process as we sometimes had to make decisions to increase the inventory instead of reducing it. We will have some more difficulties this year and might not reach the target that we had defined before but we are still putting a lot of focus to make sure that we have the materials we need and have the reserves to prevent issues in the supply chain.” For example, Embraer has a sufficient inventory of titanium for two to three years, so it isn’t affected by supply problems from Russian titanium. Although titanium isn’t on the sanctions list and can be sourced freely, the sanctions on Russia following the invasion of Ukraine have resulted in higher prices and nervousness within the aviation industry. Boeing has suspended sourcing titanium from Russia while Airbus continues to do so through subsidiaries of Russian firm VSMPO-Avisma that are located outside Russia. Embraer is identifying new sources where to get the lightweight metal, said Gomes Neto. Learning from Toyota To further streamline production processes, Embraer announced a partnership with Toyota do Brasil on June 30 to implement the Toyota Production Strategy (TPS) philosophy. The Japanese car maker introduced this refined method of its production philosophy early this century. TPS includes an extension of its lean philosophy introduced in 2007, just-in-time deliveries of parts to the assembly line, and jidoka quality standards. “Bringing Toyota to execute this work reinforces Embraer’s commitment to focus on business excellence and sustainable growth,” said Francisco Gomes Neto in a media statement. “It will be an excellent opportunity to exchange knowledge and accelerate the usage of the Lean philosophy in the production systems, while strengthening practices already conducted by the Embraer Enterprise Excellence Program, the P3E.”
