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EUROFIGHTER PT001 IN FINAL ASSEMBLY

At BAE Systems' company airfield at Warton on the west coast of England, Hangar 302 is still pretty empty apart from the Eurofighter prototypes DA2 and DA4 and of course the first production aircraft, the two-seater PT001. But before long the place should become a hive of activity, as the plant is designed to produce up to four and a half aircraft per month. The Royal Air Force has ordered 232 Typhoons, and in Lancashire they are hoping to win export orders as well.

BAE Systems has invested 15.49 million Pounds (DM 51 million) in radically renovating and re-equipping the hangar, which was originally built for the production of Tornados. As far as the company is concerned, the money was well spent as it was invested in equipment which will enable rapid throughput and, along with this, significant cost reductions. Quality should also benefit.

BAE Systems has chosen to organise production around integrated teams and new workflow procedures. There is no assembly line any more but, instead, eight docks in which aircraft spend virtually the entire fitting out and test periods. These docks are equipped with all the necessary electrical connections and hydraulics systems. Only when it comes to checking the fuel system do the Eurofighters have to be rolled out to a special test unit near the main door.

Before installation of the equipment begins in one of the docks, naturally the various subassemblies have to be put together. This is done using an "automatic alignment facility" which enables the individual parts to be moved to the nearest one-tenth of a millimetre. The exact location of the components around all the axes is measured by two computer-aided lasers which then steer the movable supports on which the aircraft is jacked up.

The final assembly process begins with the mid-fuselage section, which in the case of PT001 arrived from EADS Deutschland (Dasa), Manching on 6 September. It was joined not long afterwards by a tail section built at Alenia Aerospazio in Caselle (Turin). Assembly took 582 hours, only around one-fifth of the estimated time. In actual fact it had been assumed that the work would require a 21-strong team, but initial experience shows that the work can be performed with a team little more than half that size.

But not everything is running smoothly. For example, when FLUG REVUE visited Warton at the beginning of November the fuselage forebody had not yet been assembled due to some minor fitting problems. Attachment of the wings supplied by EADS CASA and Alenia was also around two weeks behind schedule, while the parts list contained a large number of items that were highlighted in red. Delivery of equipment such as the hydraulic retraction jack for the main undercarriage or the hydraulic actuator on the canard is running between 69 and 88 days late. The cooling fan for the brakes has been sent back to the manufacturer for rework due to quality defects.

But such problems are only to be expected on a new programme. At BAE Systems they are therefore confident of having sufficient time in reserve to get the first production Eurofighter airborne on 31 August 2001 as planned. All the same, PT001 still has to undergo 51 weeks of final assembly, whereas it is estimated that by the time 20 aircraft have been through final assembly throughput time will have dropped to only 16 weeks.

PT001 is also an instrumented production aircraft and is to be used for test purposes after it has been officially handed over to the UK Ministry of Defence. The Royal Air Force will take delivery of its first Typhoon in June 2002. This will be part of the first batch of twelve aircraft, which are to be used for pilot training. Training will initially be carried out at Warton.

While BAE Systems may be ahead on final assembly, work is also in full swing at the other partners' manufacturing facilities. Assembly of the first Italian production aircraft was set to begin in the middle of November at Alenia in Caselle and in December at EADS Deutschland in Manching. Only EADS (CASA) in Spain is taking a little longer. Here final assembly of the first production aircraft is planned to commence by March 2001.

From page 63 of FLUG REVUE 1/2001