Guilty. I plead guilty to ripping off the title of this issue’s Editor’s View column from the classic children’s book The Little Engine That Could. The book’s theme, “I think I can; I think I can,” has been lauded as a motivational recitation for youngsters around the world. Ironically, that theme might also describe the current mood at Airbus, which in October announced yet another delay-this one of just about one year-in production of their (still) much-anticipated A380 airliner.
While the delays have resulted in organizational shakeups, realignments, business-improvement plans-whatever you want to call them-it should not be overlooked that there is an actual piece at the center of the storm; that piece is an electrical wiring harness.
Christian Streiff, shortly before resigning (!) as Airbus’s president and chief executive officer, stressed in his comments on October 4 that the production delays have been a result of organization inefficiency. “It is Airbus as a whole which failed,” he said, “and certainly not the teams on the shop floors.”
Even so, he noted, “The production process has one big flaw, one weak link in the chain-that of the design of the electrical harness installation in the forward and aft fuselage. To be clear, this is the weak link in the manufacturing chain; this is the reason why ramping up the production is hampered.”
Then he quoted figures that are quite literally awe-inspiring. “The issue of the electrical harnesses is extremely complex,” he said, “with 530 kilometers of cables, 100,000 wires, and 40,300 connectors. It is twice as complex as our next largest aircraft.”
I’ll try to put other pertinent points into a nutshell. (But before I do, let me state that I read the full text of Streiff’s speech on the Web site of ATW-www.atwonline.com. Hopefully, by the time you read this, the text will still be available at that site should you wish to read it in its entirety.) The underlying problem is that engineering tools, including design packages and databases, were not advanced enough to successfully map out the harnesses’ placement. As a result, when it came time to install these harnesses during manufacture, they ... for lack of a better phrase ... didn’t fit.
Importantly, and as Streiff has stressed, the difficulties Airbus has encountered with electrical wiring harnesses has not sacrificed the integrity, quality, or safety of the four A380s that already have been produced and have logged more than 2,000 hours of test flights.
Airbus has put in place what the company ensures are appropriate measures to address the problem, including the deployment of more-advanced engineering tools and the initiation of training for the use of those tools.
Many lessons reside within this tale of woe from Airbus, and I invite all of you to share your thoughts, comments, and insights with us here at Connector Specifier. The one idea that sticks most with me (a rather simple guy from the woods of New Hampshire with no engineering background and a degree in English, of all things) is this: That has to be just about, if not in actuality, the most complex wiring harness of all time, so maybe nobody reading this expects to encounter any connectivity issue on quite this level. But at the same time, I have to believe the quality control that goes into the construction of a commercial airliner is more strenuous and comprehensive than any other construction activity we can think of.
If both of those assumptions of mine are true, then on balance, Airbus faces many of the same challenges that we all do each working day. In particular, venturing into new territory with old tools (or techniques, knowledge, or skills) can quickly teach us that we need new tools (or techniques, knowledge, or skills). May we all learn from Airbus’ challenges. And maybe three or four years from now, when you step onto an A380 for the first time, rest comfortably with the knowledge that the wiring harnesses in that aircraft were examined and quality-controlled under watchful eyes, at the highest levels of a multi-billion-dollar organization, more than any previous harnesses in the history of aviation.
Patrick McLaughlin
Chief Editor
patrick@pennwell.com
