Operational Excellence
The method of solving science is the best way for businesses to rise when they are close to bankruptcy. Most important is the right time, the right job and the right person.
Lufthansa Technik that day
For those in the aviation industry, it is certainly impossible not to know the German airline Lufthansa. Lufthansa Technik is the aircraft maintenance and repair business (Maintenance – Repair – Overhaul). This is a factory specializing in maintenance of the Compressor and compressor engines on civil aircraft such as CFM56, General Electric CF6-80 and Pratt & Whitney V2500. These are the engines on popular civil aircraft such as Boeing 737, 747 or Airbus A320, A321
Figure 1: CFM56 engine at an air show.
In order to optimize investment and operating costs, and ensure flight safety, the aircraft must be overhaul every 10,000 hours to ensure safety for the next flight. All engines in this phase will be completely disassembled and renewed. Especially the moving parts with high speed, high temperature such as turbine blades or compression chambers, every 10,000 hours of flight will be partially disassembled and compensated welding to return to the original state.
Figure 2: Structure of a jet engine
This Lufthansa Technik factory has always done this job well and has received trust from customers throughout the years. Along with the development of the company are more and more orders and Duc also contributes to that growth by increasing turbine repair output by more than 3 times.
As production increased, it was time for the factory to relocate to a larger scale, including all machinery and people. But no one expected that this change had a strong impact on businesses, leading the company to the brink of bankruptcy.
Crisis because of quality issues
When moving to a new factory, the company was also at the time of serious quality errors. When returning to the new factory, the compensating chamber of the Compression Chamber has a quality error, the weld is red instead of blue. The factory has skilled workers and experienced engineers but for weeks could not find the cause of the problem.
In particular, the problem culminates when more than 80% of products fail and the Production Manager is off work during the day. Even the CEO was asked to stop working and innovate because he couldn’t help the factory find problems and solve them. The factory was in crisis because of work stoppages and the quality of output was no longer guaranteed.
Realizing the serious problem of the incident, the management could not sit still and began searching.
Where to start?
At that time, OPEX Team were an engineer designing repair tools (jig & fixture), and after some successful projects such as systematizing thousands of technical drawings of 20 years of operation, or improving 3x Plant capacity, wwe proposed to solve this quality problem.
Upon further investigation, OPEX discovered that the quality of welds reflected in the color of the weld surface is affected by many parameters: temperature, humidity, welding techniques, welding material … Some factors change from the old factory to the new factory causing mass errors. Then the problem is reset to find the optimal formula of the above parameters to give the best quality.
Figure 3: The Compressor blades are sharpened to a standard shape
With a multivariate problem (parameters such as temperature, humidity …) and the final result of qualitative type (color), the German team chose to use an experimental design method. Through interviews with the plant’s best technical experts, the team found the 6 most important factors that can affect the quality of the weld. Experiments are set up as a set of example elements:
Experiment 1: high temperature, low humidity, welding rods A
Experiment 2: high temperature, high humidity, welding rod B
…
Each experiment was made of 3 samples, and given a quality score of 1 to 5. Back then, there were no powerful statistical probability analysis tools like Minitab, which completely worked on Excel formulas. After completing all the experiments, the results yielded a set of optimal parameters, and were tested again experimentally. The result was surprising when the weld quality was higher and more stable than it was at the old factory. And this is how OPEX and its associates support the factory, improve the quality and help it overcome the crisis and grow again.
Save the plant from understanding the source of the problem
To help a business on the brink of bankruptcy is not an easy job and just go the wrong way, you will have to be the biggest person responsible for these mistakes. This has prompted and urged OPEX to learn more, analyze more so that the most effective solution is: Fast – Effective – Low Cost.
From the redrawing quality map of the whole system, OPEX and his colleagues continue to measure and test to know the exact cause. After knowing exactly where to fix, make changes and standardize, the sweet fruit came:
Lesson for business
Every business when coming into operation will have ups and downs and business people must keep a cool head and a warm heart to learn how to observe and understand what is happening in their own business.
The vulnerabilities that degrade performance can all be addressed. Quantitative quality problems such as color, taste, and taste can be quantified and solved using appropriate methods.
When it comes to solving certain problems, whether technical or business, we all face unpredictable things. When a reliable partner with scientific solutions, the system will be very important to take us through the storm with unexpected results.
With solid experience and solid knowledge when successfully applying in many domestic and foreign projects, Duc and its associates believe that no matter how hard the problem is, we have a way to help you overcome difficulties.
Through projects that change the situation like this, OPEX increasingly has faith in a prosperous Vietnam with excellent operating systems. Our businesses can fully become the links of the global supply chain.
OPEX Consulting – Operational Excellence Your Business
