Airbus Delivers the First A380 — and a Management Lesson

As most casual readers know, Telstar Logistics loves a good tale about big airplanes. But what you may not realize is that as a leading provider of customer-focused integrated services, Telstar Logistics also loves a great management story. And since our research indicates that 97.3 percent of Telstar Logistics readers think that a "newspaper" is a biodegradable form of fish-wrap, we figure there's no harm in calling your attention to a fascinating article that ran in yesterday's Wall Street Journal about an aircraft that we know well: the Airbus A380 superjumbo.

Yesterday, Airbus handed over the first service-ready A380 to Singapore Airlines. But as the WSJ reports, after two years of delays and cost-overruns, it took a lot of sleepless nights to reach yesterday's delivery milestone. In fact, owing to high-level executive disarray and trans-national pissiness between the French and German arms of Airbus, the task of getting the A380 out the door fell to Rüdiger Fuchs, a German engineer who was tapped to manage the A380 production program after the first Airbus delivery delay was announced in 2006.

Mr. Fuchs faced two main problems: The electrical wiring schemes for the A380 were complex and poorly designed, and the German engineers who created the wiring schemes interacted poorly with their manufacturing colleagues in France. In other words, Mr. Fuchs had to push a rock uphill with a team that spent as much time fighting amongst themselves as they did pushing the rock. The WSJ tells us:

Mr. Fuchs's first order of business was Hamburg, where Singapore Airlines's first A380 sat without cabin fixtures because wiring wasn't finished. In early July, Mr. Fuchs for the first time compiled information from all German managers on the plane. He realized there was no way to deliver it by year end.

To accelerate work, he ordered engineers to move from their cushy offices to the factory floor, near assembly workers and the plane itself.

To keep tabs on progress, every day at 6 p.m. production managers and engineers would gather in a so-called "war room" with a big window overlooking the first superjumbo. On the walls of the crisis room hung more than 200 colored charts with labels like "Engineering Issues" and "Red Flags."

Each participant would update colleagues on the day's progress and problems. To keep them focused, Mr. Fuchs got rid of the chairs in the room and forced everyone to stand. "When you stand for two hours, you have to be concrete," says Heiko Lütjens, an engineer under Mr. Fuchs.

As problems persisted, the management solutions became more radical:

A group of German engineers would move to Toulouse. French engineers would train them on French software and design methods. The French engineers would in turn work on German parts of the A380 and report to Mr. Fuchs.

For the first time ever, the two nationalities would work as one on key parts of a major project. "I could sense it was an historic decision for Airbus," recalls Mr. Carcasses.

Soon, 80 German engineers from Hamburg arrived in Toulouse and paired with French mentors. To make the Germans feel at home, French workers organized dinners at restaurants with local specialties such as duck, foie gras and Languedoc wines.

Finally, as the revised delivery deadlines approached, the pressure to harmonize the conflicting Airbus teams reached critical mass:

In Hamburg, work rewiring Singapore Airlines's first A380 had fallen behind because setting up the new team in France distracted Mr. Fuchs. "We lost focus," he says.

By late last fall, Mr. Fuchs was desperate to finish an electrical test that Airbus had promised customers by year end. In a last-ditch effort to improve productivity, he ordered his German engineers to move off the factory floor and finish their work inside the A380 itself, to better advise assembly workers laboring on the cables.

Productivity doubled within weeks. On Dec. 30, the plane passed its test. With the plane finally wired correctly, workers installed seats, the galley and toilets.

So there you have it: A lesson in industrial-scale team-building, and a brand new A380 delivered at last to Singapore Airlines. Rest assured we'll be discussing this case study in the Telstar Logistics Executive Lounge for years to come, and we can't wait to hear the stories that will eventually emerge about how Boeing plans to overcome the latest 787 production delays.

LINKS:
Airbus, Amid Turmoil, Revives Troubled Plane (Wall Street Journal article by Daniel Michaels, October 15, 2007. Subscription required.)

Luxury takes to the skies in Singapore A380 (The Age article about the new private cabins installed in Singapore's A380s.  Great photo.)

PREVIOUSLY:
Telstar Logistics Gets Intimate with an Airbus A380

How to Evacuate 873 People from an Airbus A380

The Airbus A380 Invades America

More A380 Wake Turbulence

(Photos: Top: Pascal Parrot/Getty Images. Illustration by the Wall Street Journal. A380 wiring photo by Telstar Logistics)

Comments

[john]

Interesting story and thanks for the link.

I find this quote interesting;
To keep them focused, Mr. Fuchs got rid of the chairs in the room and forced everyone to stand. "When you stand for two hours, you have to be concrete,"

On the bridge of a ship there is, more often than not, only one chair.... the captain's. While you might get away with sitting on it in open water with no ships in sight, it's not the place a wise mate would be found during high traffic situations.

[plug1]

check this out:http://www.metacafe.com/watch/838897/tap_airbus_a310_low_pass_turn_portugal_airshow_2007_evora/

[Gerard Melling]

Very intersting document it also shows that you must lead from the front and not from a chair

[Dave]

Can I add something about this beast?

The Airbus A380 is a double-deck, wide-body, four-engine airliner manufactured by the European corporation Airbus, an EADS subsidiary.

The largest passenger airliner in the world, the A380 made its maiden flight on 27 April 2005 from Toulouse, France,[3] and made its first commercial flight on 25 October 2007 from Singapore to Sydney with Singapore Airlines. The aircraft was known as the Airbus A3XX during much of its development phase, but the nickname Superjumbo has since become associated with it.

The A380's upper deck extends along the entire length of the fuselage. This allows for a cabin with 50% more floor space than the next-largest airliner, the Boeing 747-400,[4] and provides seating for 525 people in standard three-class configuration[5][6] or up to 853 people in all economy class configuration.[7]

The A380 is offered in passenger and freighter versions. The A380-800, the passenger model, is the largest passenger airliner in the world, but has a shorter fuselage than the Airbus A340-600 which is Airbus' next biggest passenger aeroplane. The A380-800F, the freighter model, is offered as one of the largest freight aircraft, with a listed payload capacity exceeded only by the Antonov An-225.[8] The A380-800 has a design range of 15,200 kilometres (8,200 nmi), sufficient to fly from New York to Hong Kong for example, and a cruising speed of Mach 0.85 (about 900 km/h or 560 mph at cruise altitude).