Tag: composites

OM in the News: Honda’s Newest Product Flies

Mounting the engines over the top of the wings reduces the drag in flight
Mounting the engines over the top of the wings reduces the drag in flight

“Honda is finally getting its wings,” writes The Wall Street Journal (May 18, 2015). Some new products, as we discuss in Chapter 5, go from inception to market in months, and some in years.  But for Honda, it involved 3 decades of planning and development to deliver one of its most unusual innovations: an ultrafast business jet that carries its engines above its wings. The $4.5 million 7-seat HondaJet is set for delivery to customers mid-2015. For Michimasa Fujino, the 54-year-old CEO of Honda Aircraft, it is the culmination of a decades long fight to make a Honda aircraft in the face of skeptical executives, technical delays and the global recession. His influence touches every aspect of the design, from its curves to the manufacturing process. “This airplane is my art piece,” he states.

The jet gives Honda—which also makes robots, boat motors, and lawn mowers—entree into a new market. But no modern car company has successfully made the transition to building aircraft. Honda is betting that technological advances will trigger new demand from buyers with its lightweight body made of carbon-fiber composites–providing 17% better fuel efficiency than competitors while having the highest speed in its class: 480 miles per hour.

Fujino’s first decade produced a pair of designs, but the breakthrough came in 1996 when he sketched the basics of the plane’s current design on the back of a wall calendar. Inspired by principles in a 1930s aerodynamics textbook, the design mounted jet engines atop the wings to boost cabin space and cut noise. In 1997, Fujino presented the business case to the board with the sketch in hand, receiving approval for a flying prototype. It would take 3 years of persuasion, using simulations and wind tunnels to prove his point. He and 40 employees started building the prototype in 2000 in a hangar in Greensboro, N.C. The prototype flew successfully in 2003. Today, HondaJet’s workforce has grown to 1,300 at its 133-acre N.C. campus, providing easy access to the U.S. and Europe, 80% of its estimated market.

Classroom discussion questions:

1. Why did product development take so long?

2. Provide a brief SWOT analysis of the new product.

OM in the News: The Challenge of Fixing a Boeing 787

ethiopian airDesigning a new product such as the Boeing 787 is a huge undertaking, as discussed in Chapter 5, “The Design of Services and Goods.” The thin plastic skin on the 787 Dreamliner, writes The New York Times (July 30, 2013),  “is an engineering marvel, a mix of carbon fibers and epoxy molded into large barrel-shaped sections that are then baked at up to 350 degrees in giant ovens.” But while airlines love how this lightweight concoction saves fuel, the recent fire on a Ethiopian Air 787 in London provides the first test of how much more difficult and costly it will be to repair serious damage than on older aluminum planes.  Each day a jet remains grounded costs an airline tens of thousands of dollars.

The cause of the fire, a pinched wire on an emergency transmitter, was fairly mundane. But the high temperatures weakened the supports in a 10-foot stretch at the top of the rear fuselage and seared the paint on the top of the skin, causing the most extensive damage yet to one of the new 787s. Boeing will have to cut out the damaged areas and bolt a large patch, made of overlapping panels of composite materials, onto the plane. It will also need to install new composite supports and shore up the structural integrity of the plane. If the damage were more extreme, Boeing could remove the entire 23-foot-long barrel containing most of the jet’s rear fuselage and snap in another one.

The use of composite materials on planes has grown steadily over the last 4 decades. Only 1% of the weight of Boeing’s 747 jumbo jet came from composite parts when it was introduced in 1969. That increased to 11% by 1995 on the 777, which has an all-composite tail section. Composites now account for half of the 787’s weight, which, together with more efficient engines, cut fuel consumption by 20%.

Discussion questions:

1. What design issues did Boeing face in creating this plane? (Refer to the Global Company Profile that opens Chapter 2).

2. Why did Boeing make extensive use of composites?