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Are fuel prices your next supplier quality
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By: M. Dreikorn
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July-August 2008
AS&D Quality, Safety and Regulatory
Newsletter
Your
source for professional connection
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The objective
of this newsletter is to provide perspective to the
Aviation, Space, and Defense (AS&D) industry on
current and relevant quality, safety, and regulatory
matters in our industry.
|
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Are fuel prices your next supplier
quality challenge?
We all feel the pain of rising fuel
prices. Every time we go to the gas station we
experience the incredible sucking sound of cash
leaving our pockets. In the U.S., fuel prices
have risen more than 25% in one year. As
individuals, the pain is obvious and immediate.
But what effect will sustained increases in fuel
prices have on the aviation, space, and defense
industry?
To answer that broad question, let's
look at our own behavior. What's the first
reaction most of us have when we have fewer financial
resources to spend on our daily necessities?
Most of us will start cutting back on things we might
perceive as nonessential; and may even delay spending
on items that are actually essential but may not
provide immediate pain if we do not have them.
We can easily get into a juggling contest with the
economy and hope for things to work out.
The
reality is that our value-streams are no different
than we are as individuals. When suppliers have
fewer resources to conduct business, they too must
engage in cost cutting tactics. So, where
does expensive fuel play in this discussion? The
short answer is everywhere.
Let's start off with an obvious impact, which
is logistics. The more global your value-stream
is the more your parts and services have to be
transported. Take a look at your shipping
expenses over the past year. I bet you'll find
that they are at least 25% more expensive than last
year's shipping expenses. Now calculate the
various transportation transactions throughout your
value-stream to get an idea of the magnitude of the
growing problem. And guess what, even if your
organization has a fixed contract which insolates you
from variable shipping prices, the money has to be
saved from somewhere. And, that somewhere might
reside in the quality of the work performed.
Another impact area will be in the materials
organizations purchase. These materials must
also be transported and the cost must be absorbed
somewhere. Additionally, many of the materials
we utilize in our production and services require
petroleum to be produced. Again, adding cost to
the value-stream.
We could provide a hundred
more examples of where rising fuel prices are adding
cost to our value-stream. However, the point I
am attempting to make is that we must be aware of what
potential effects that rising fuel prices may have on
product and service quality. We can not assume
that someone else is going to handle the money side of
the business, and that everything will be OK.
The reality is that suppliers and organizations alike
will need to make serious cuts and/or changes to
remain competitive. Theses cuts and changes can
not be at the expense of product quality and safety.
So, here
are a few thoughts you might want to consider related
to rising fuel prices and your value-stream:
- How distributed is your value-stream and
what is the financial impact on transportation of
products and services?
- Who has the financial responsibility for
product transportation?
- What changes have been made in the
value-stream to manage rising fuel prices?
- Have suppliers recently reduced
in-direct staff?
- Have suppliers selected new sources for
materials?
- Have suppliers recently moved work?
- Have suppliers made changes to their
production and/or servicing processes?
The above questions are provided as
potential red flag indicators. You should be
able to ponder the potential effects of rising fuel
costs on your own value-stream and come up with a list
of red flags that you should be looking for. In
doing so, don't forget that some problems may take
years to manifest themselves into something visible
and painful. Give the control of special
processes and nondestructive evaluation special
emphasis as these areas have the greatest potential
for latent defects.
Quality and safety is
everyone's responsibility and today's tough economic
times require us to think proactively to ensure such.
Written
by: Michael Dreikorn
The IPL Group, LLC
(The IPL Group helps organizations deploy
sustainable performance improvement.)
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 The
following are news links relevant to quality, safety,
and regulatory matters in the Aviation, Space, Defense
and Maritime industries. These are events which
have been reported in the months of June and July 2008.
As a professional, it's your responsibility to
remain relevant.
Workforce
New perks
making expats stay longer in UAE (UAE)
Expatriates are choosing to call the UAE
'home' for increasingly longer periods of time and
investing more in their homes than they have in the
past, due to a shift in salary packages on offer,
revealed a survey conducted by Easa Saleh Al Gurg
Group (ESAG).
Aging
workforce presents new safety challenges (USA)
As the number
of employees over the age of 55 continues to rise,
businesses are faced with the challenge of retaining
these workers while reducing health- and
injury-related losses.
 The
Federal Aviation Administration is offering $100,000
incentive bonuses to attract veteran controllers to
move to facilities in a handful of U.S. locales.
The National
Aerospace Laboratories, celebrating its golden jubilee
year, is facing a serious manpower crunch with several
posts of scientists remaining vacant, according to its
Director Dr A R Upadhya.
UND Aerospace
at the University of North Dakota (UND), announces a
three-year agreement with Bharati Vidyapeeth
University (BVU) in Pune, India to provide a one-year
pilot training program for the BVU Aviation program.
General
Electric tapped GE Aviation's head of its commercial
engines group to lead the jet engine unit after former
chief executive Scott Donnelly took a top position at
Textron.
Amidst the
already grim look of the U.S. and state economy, job
prospects for Iraq War veterans are slimming as many
struggle to relate their unique war experience to
well-paying jobs, according to the study.
NASA will
begin to reduce its 17,000-member space shuttle
workforce in October, laying off 200 contractors who
help produce the winged vessel's huge external fuel
tanks in New Orleans.
In a report
titled State of Learning in Canada: Toward a Learning
Future, the Canadian Council on Learning provides an
overview of how well Canadians are doing in various
stages of learning, from the early years right through
to adult years.
Regulatory & Safety
FAA
Technical Center celebrates 50 years (USA)
 The Federal
Aviation Administration's William J. Hughes Technical
Center will celebrate its Golden anniversary of 50
years on July 1 with a ceremony at its Atlantic City
International Airport facilities in New Jersey.
The Civil
Aviation Safety Authority moved to suspend the
operations of Lip Air Pty Ltd, trading as Aero
Tropics, because it believed there were "serious and
imminent risks" to the safety of the carrier's
passengers.
High fuel
prices and public clamor to reduce aviation's
environmental footprint may provide the catalyst for
Europe to finally implement its Single European Sky
initiative after years of much talk but little
progress.
Congress ordered the Inspector
General to review the agency programs and weaknesses
that came to light at House Transporation &
Infrastructure hearings earlier this year into
"critical lapses" in FAA oversight.
Australians
are increasingly confident about the safety of
aviation in Australia, a new national survey
commissioned by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority
(CASA) has found.
According the
report released by Civil Aviation Safety Authority,
passengers are now more worried about human error and
mechanical problems than terrorism and sabotage.
As of the
30th June 2008, aviation relations between the
European Community and the United States will be
further strengthened through an agreement on aviation
safety.
The FAA
brought together 325 experts last week to spend three
days discussing the problem of fatigue in aviation
operations, and the agency says the symposium produced
agreement on two major points -- fatigue is a problem,
and something should be done about it.
 Federal officials are
investigating claims that regulators approved the
design of a revolutionary new small jet in 2006
despite safety concerns raised by the engineers and
test pilots who evaluated the plane, congressional
officials said.
Bulgaria is
now raised from the Category 2 safety rating given in
September 2003 to Category 1. A Category 1 rating
means the countrys civil aviation authority complies
with ICAO standards.
ICAO wants to
make 'just culture' safety reporting and investigation
global (ICAO)
The
International Civil Aviation Organisation wants to
stop the automatic prosecution of pilots, air traffic
control officers and other frontline staff following
accidents or incidents.
...The government of
Ghana would ensure the implementation of programmes to
correct deficiencies in policies, regulatory regimes
and infrastructure for the provision of safe and
secure air services.
The FAA and
the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) have signed
a bilateral agreement that will strengthen air safety
while reducing regulatory burdens and costs for
manufacturers, operators and aviation authorities in
the U.S. and Europe.
Civil Aviation
A new aircraft
designation tag has been blamed for assignment of a
giant All Nippon Airways Boeing 777-300 jetliner to a
too-short Los Angeles International Airport taxiway.
The safest
place to sit on a plane is an aisle seat close to the
emergency exit row, a study of 105 accidents and
accounts of 2,000 survivors has found.
With airlines
paying about twice as much for fuel this year as last
year, fuel costs have increased to more than 40
percent of airlines' operating expenses, which could
push air travel far beyond affordability for the
majority of the traveling public, the coalition report
stated.
A strong industry
with challenges to face (Canada)
This are good
times for the Canadian aerospace industry. But as
healthy as the industry is, there are forces at play
that could hurt its long-term success.
While
overloading used to be an easy culprit in most sea
mishaps in the Philippines involving passenger liners,
the case of the recently capsized Princess of the
Stars shows that traveling by sea is not the primary
choice to reach any of the archipelago's over 7,100
islands anymore.
Indonesia's
Jogjakarta airport was operating without a licence
because of safety issues when a Garuda plane crashed
last year, killing 21 people.
How are soaring fuel
costs impacting Latin American airlines? Three experts
share their insights.
 Unstable conditions, and how
pilots reacted before eight people died, are under
early scrutiny.
 Vern Raburn,
the charismatic founder and chief executive of very
light jet manufacturer Eclipse Aviation, has been forced
to relinquish his post following a unanimous decision by
the company's board of directors.
All private airlines engage agencies that claim
to have a pool of qualified drivers to operate the
buses, but the recent accidents at the airport puts a
question mark on their claim.
Daniel Elwell, FAA assistant administrator for
aviation policy, planning and environment, has joined
the Aerospace Industries Association as v-p of civil
aviation.
 "This modern facility will be the
center for merchant mariner licensing and
documentation operations and will be responsible for
providing the merchant mariner community with the
highest quality and most efficient credentialing
services" Indian shipowners are investing billions
of dollars to buy more ships to cope with the rising
demand for international trade.
Senator Juan Ponce Enrile on Monday said
he will urge the Maritime Industry Authority (Marina)
to cancel Sulpicio Lines' franchise following the
spate of marine tragedies involving the shipping
company.
Rather than flying one there, a NASA
scientist believes we should build a telescope on the
moon using the lunar soil.
Defense
A
culture of risk-taking and sloppy safety standards
exists in the army's elite helicopter squadron,
according to a damning report by a military inquiry
into the fatal crash of a Black Hawk helicopter off
Fiji in 2006.
Rescuers recovered all
18 bodies from the wreckage of an Indonesian military
plane that crashed into a jungle-clad mountain.
Alabama
Aircraft Industries files lawsuit challenging Air
Force's KC-135 contract award to Boeing (USA)
Alabama Aircraft Industries, Inc. (AAII)
announced today that it will be filing a lawsuit in
the United States Court of Federal Claims challenging
the United States Air Force's selection of Boeing for
a $1.1 billion contract to maintain the fleet of
KC-135 refueling tankers.
Sonar
training can coexist with laws to protect marine life
(USA)
The Navy's
application for a new permit for sonar training
exercises in Hawaii waters could be the last time it
will need to go through the process, depending on a
ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court.
Material
scam unearthed in Army (india)
An FIR has been filed in
December in Mumbai claims that officials at the
Controller of Quality Assurance (CQA), an agency of
the Army that is responsible for buying and checking
the quality of equipment, has cheated the Army of
crores of rupees.
As the share
of domestic sources in procuring the needs of the
Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) has risen to 41 percent,
the Undersecretariat for the Defense Industry (SSM)
has started to develop measures to ensure more active
participation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)
in this field.
 The
FM07 micro air vehicle (MAV), with a wingspan of 60
centimeters, is equipped with a camera capable of
transmitting real-time images to ground controllers
and state-of-the-art control systems allowing it to
take off and land automatically.
The Navy
said one of its nuclear-powered submarines leaked
minimally radioactive water while travelling to Japan,
Guam and Hawaii over several months.
Space
Martian soil 'could
support life' (USA)
 The first
results from the Phoenix probe's analysis have shown
that the Martian soil is capable of supporting life
and could even be used to grow crops.
The U.S.
Federal Aviation Administration warned at the end of
July 2008 that civil companies, such as Sir Richard
Branson's Virgin Galactic, who are pioneering the
first sub-orbital flights as part of the fledgling
space tourism industry have extraordinary risks in
their endeavors. Virgin Galactic says it will be
thousands of times safer than any previous human
spaceflights.
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AS&D
Events
The
following is a listing of upcoming events relevant to
the AS&D industry.
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This newsletter is brought to you by The IPL Group,
LLC. We hope you find the content informative
and useful. If there are other features of this
newsletter that you would like to see, let us know.
The power of our industry is not solely driven by
mechanical means, it is our intellectual base which
brings innovation and strength.
Sincerely,
Michael
Dreikorn
President The IPL
Group, LLC
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Mr
Robertson has called a debate in Westminster Hall to
insist on a report on what has been done, is being
done and remains to be done.