4.2 How Airbus A380 was managedThink about this in terms of what weve learned in class so far i.e. talk about scope , schedule, budget, resources, risks whether the customer was satisified (no, they were fuming because of the delays)

Since its founding in 1970, Airbus had operated as a loose consortium of aerospace companies in France, Germany, Britain, and Spain. Now, the company said, these operations would be knit together into a smoothrunning, pan-European business. In fact, Airbus remained surprisingly balkanized and the tangled mess inside the A380 is the disastrous result. "The various Airbus locations had their own legacy software, methods, procedures, and Airbus never succeeded in unifying all those efforts,"

One reason may be that Airbus' top management was cobbled together from leaders of the former consortium members. They retained close ties with managers in their own countries and may have been reluctant to force unwanted changes on them. Whatever the reason, Weber says, "It is a massive management failure. There are tremendously dedicated and intelligent people throughout Airbus, and some of them wanted to get [the newest] CATIA embedded, but management just didn't put a high priority on it."

Coordinating the numerous entities of Airbus:In order to reduce the development effort and the associated risk, Airbus looked for additional partners. Airbus succeeded in winning the Belgian Belairbus and the Dutch Fokker Aviation. The risk sharing partners agreed to bear the cost of development in exchange for the right to become exclusive suppliers for the A380. Airbus was prepared to share profits with risk sharing partners, and had signed agreements with nine leading companies by mid-2000. According to the contracts, the partners would be repaid on a per plane basis. If Airbus did not sell any A380s, the risk sharing partners would not recover any of their initial investments.At this time the company also announced that it had taken additional steps to integrate the consortium and announced a new administrative structure. This structure would physically locate top managers from each of the sixteen sites in one location. It was a reorganization that would put an end to the conflict and cross-purposes that often occurred with the more independent, informal, and geographically dispersed organization. Yet, the change would prove to be inadequate.

AssemblyMajor structural sections of the A380 are built in France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom, and their components are provided by suppliers from around the world which there are General Electric, Goodrich, Rolls-Royce, SAFRAN and United Technologies Corp. After the body part of A380 was built, the parts were transported by air, river, sea and land by barge to Langon, and by oversize road convoys to the assembly hall in Toulouse, France.

In May 27, 2004, Airbus engineers assembled the shell and structure of the aircraft. The task is to join the 7 major parts into one giant aircraft which the process will take 5 weeks. Gilles Cormier, Head of structural Assembly was responsible of structural assembly. When the structure and shell of the aircraft was completed in July, 2004, the airbus A380 aircraft was moved to factory beside to continue electrical wiring approximate 800km long and several electrical components computer ware installed. JeanPierre Faure, Head of the Equipping in charge of the installation of various electrical components and wiring. After assembly, the aircraft are flown to Hamburg Finkenwerder Airport to be furnished and painted. It takes 3,600 liter of paint to cover the 3,100 exterior of an A380. Airbus sized the production facilities and supply chain for a production rate of four A380s per month.

Assembly:

Just putting together the aircraft of such big size is indeed problematic. And it is difficult to put together a manufacturing facility so big that it can accommodate the manufacturing of all the parts at one place. That's why they came up with this idea of manufacturing various parts at different places but assembling them at one place. Various parts are built all over Europe such as 1. Wings are built in Wales 2. Fuselage parts, cabin installation, painting and Tailfin in Germany 3. Nose and Fuselage in France 4. Rudder in Spain Once these parts are manufactured they are transported to Toulouse in France where the final assembly takes place. This shows the complexity of such a process. One part which mismatches from rest of the parts can jeopardise the manufacturing of an entire aeroplane. The process initially led to delays but it is indeed a great idea once it stabilises. The wings are manufactured at a factory in Wales. Each wings comprises of around 32000 parts which suggests the complexity of making each part of A380. Once the wings are completed they are loaded into a barge and bought to Mostyn before they are put into a roll on / roll off ship for transportation to Toulouse. The rear part of fuselage are assembled in Hamburg whereas the vertical tailplane is assembled at Stade. They are then transported to Toulouse. The fuselage is put together at Hamburg which along with wings from Mostyn is sent to France. At France the final fuselage is assembled taking the parts coming in from different parts of Germany At France the centre wing box and belly fairing are incorporated to the fuselage. The two parts of the nose section which basically contains the cockpit is then assembled. Both the fuselage sections are sent to Pauillac by ferry where it meets the horizontal tailplane which has arrived from Spain. All the components are then taken through barges to Langon from where they begin their final 240 km journey to their final destination. At Toulouse they are finally assembled to form what happens to be the worlds largest airliner. After testing the assembled A380 is flown to Hamburg to have the cabin fitted and painted before delivering it to the customer.

So indeed the manufacturing of such a monstrous plane is a nightmare. Everything has to be precision perfect or it could lead to delays which ultimately affects the bottom-line. The processes actually takes advantages of the best methodologies and is indeed a product which has

a mark of almost every country in Europe. This strategy shows how to use the best of every regions which are miles apart without compromising on the quality.------------

Why did the project fail? Failure could not be attributed to a technical problem nor could it be attributed to project managers. They suggested that the problem was much larger and placed the blame at the very top. They concluded that because managers at headquarters remained loyal to their former constituents, the company was plagued with a convoluted management structure that repeatedly slowed decision making (Gauthier-Villars, D. and Michaels, D., EADS Considers a Simple Management Structure, WSJ, July 9, 2007, p.A3).

Business Week also pointed the finger at top management. It suggested that the problem was not with the software but with a Surprisingly balkanized organization (Matlack, Carol, Business Week Online, Airbus: First Blame the Software, October 5, 2006). Others blamed an unresponsive management process, continual squabbling among its executives, and unresolved internal disputes (Head to Head in the Clouds, The Economist, January 13, 2007, p.75.). It is always tempting to blame project failures on technical issues. Was it really the failure to update the CATIA software? Unfortunately, in this case , the blame belongs elsewhere. If indeed the software was critical to the integration and design of the aircraft which it certainly was then why was it not coordinated from the top. After all, this is what the consortium was expected to do best. Could it be that management, although they succeeded in moving executives to a central location in Toulouse, failed to move the culture off dead center? So the blame, as is often the case, needs to focus on managements contribution to the project failure.

The most important lesson is that organizational culture matters and without an effective culture projects and their project managers are condemned to produce mediocre results or fail altogether.

pricing versus profitability:

Money related:yy

See HISTORY OF THE A380 in Airbus 380 Feslmeier Schueler Airbus A3XX Developing the World's Largest Commercial Jet (A)