Setting the wheels in motion

James Careless hears how shopfloor automation has helped set the wheels in motion to power Héroux-Devtek's landing gear manufacturing success. Soon after its founding in 1942, Héroux-Devtek of Longueuil, Québec became an aircraft component machine shop. In 1960 the company ventured into aircraft landing gear, gaining such expertise and respect that NASA hired Héroux-Devtek to build the Lunar Module's landing gear.

“The attention we gained from the Lunar Module caught the eye of the US military,” begins Dominique Dallaire, Héroux-Devtek's vice-president (pictured), Eastern Region. “It helped drive our work in both the MRO and design aspects of landing gear, resulting in us becoming a respected OEM in the 1990s.”

Today Dallaire ranks Héroux-Devtek as the third largest landing gear manufacturer in the world, behind Messier-Bugatti-Dowty and UTC Aerospace Systems. “We may not be the biggest, but we do everything we can to be the best,” he adds.
If size is any indicator, Héroux-Devtek is doing something right. It now has 14 locations in 13 cities in Canada, the US and UK, and about 1,400 employees on staff. More importantly, the company makes landing gear for most of the major civilian/military fixed wing and rotorcraft companies. Among Héroux-Devtek's most visible landing gear products are those being produced for the Embraer Legacy 450/500, the C-130J Hercules, the CH-47 Chinook Helicopter and the Boeing 777/777X.

“The 777/777X's landing gear, which we will start delivering to Boeing in 2017 is the tallest set of civilian gear in the world – even taller than those used on the Airbus A380,” says Dallaire. “To provide sufficient ground clearance for the 777/777X's twin engines, the 777/777X's landing gear stands 16ft tall. It is too big to move by ground transport, which is why we will perform final assembly at a plant in Everett, Washington, for direct mating to the 777/777X at Boeing's factory.”

Part manufacturing approach

Like other companies in the aerospace industry, Héroux-Devtek is under constant pressure to reduce its costs.
“There are basically two ways to achieve this,” says Dominique Dallaire. “One is by outsourcing to offshore companies in areas with lower operating costs. The other way is through automation, to optimise manpower productivity while improving cost and efficiency.”

In a bid to keep its component manufacturing processes in-house and entirely under its quality control, Héroux-Devtek has “made a conscious decision to focus on automation,” said Dallaire. “We are therefore putting our investments in our own shops, while doing everything we can to achieve the highest level of quality production possible. To date, it appears that we made the right decision.”

Of course, Héroux-Devtek knows that not all aspects of landing gear manufacturing can be automated. The company relies heavily on its employees when it comes to complex tasks such as gear MRO, assembly, installation, and testing. This is why it is focusing its automation efforts on the component production side of landing gear manufacture.

In the Héroux-Devtek component production model, as many tasks as feasible are executed by automated CNC-controlled milling and machining equipment/robots. Meanwhile, humans serve to monitor and supply the computer-controlled machines with the necessary raw material and tools, to keep an eye on issues and resolve any that arise, and to ensure that the overall production process is running smoothly.

“Humans, machines and information systems are in constant interaction,” notes Dallaire.

Using this approach, Héroux-Devtek has been able to speed up the production of landing gear components, making them all with precision and consistency.

“During the daytime, we run the machines with human support, but during lights out hours and weekends, the machines run themselves as long as they have been properly stocked beforehand, providing increased productivity and better work schedule to our machinists,” states Dallaire.

Nevertheless, the company has yet to achieve the degree of productivity it is seeking. “Typically, on a 24/7 basis in a machining facility, milling machines spindle's will actively cut metal for about 40% of the time, due to the downtimes required for setups, machine monitoring, restocking, inspection and transferring components from one machine to another,” he says. “With our new methods and Flexible Manufacturing System, we have recently moved them close to 75% utilisation – and with the further improvements we are bringing in, we hope to hit 85%, or even 90% in the near future.”

Gear assembly automation

As a company that makes new and MRO business, commercial, and military landing gear, Héroux-Devtek has to be all things to all customers. As a result, the intensive automation approach that its uses for component manufacturing is applied to actual gear assembly differently.

“We make a lot of one-piece flow, unique configuration complete landing gear sets, as opposed to lot production of landing gear components,” says Dallaire. “Hence, it makes sense to focus on human-driven assembly, because humans can do many things on a product-by-product basis and our technician expertise is part of providing the best landing gear to a customer.”

At the same time, Héroux-Devtek recognises the benefits of automation for ensuring quality control; even in areas of human-dominated production. This is why the company uses controlled tool dispensing/return systems, so that items don't go missing and end up left inside an aircraft engine as foreign object debris (FOD). The company applies similar processes to inventory control and quality monitoring; again with an eye on ensuring precision and minimal errors.

“Our customers count on us; we must maintain a mistake-free environment,” says Dallaire. “By constantly striving to do so and by implementing systematically mistake-proofing tools and work instructions, we eliminate what mistakes could be made.”

Soon, on Héroux-Devtek shopfloors, while machines perform distinct milling and machining tasks under their own control, automated parts tracking and production planning systems will simplify the work of the employee on manual workstation and synchronise movement of components under production from one workstation to another. The goal is to have integrated ‘work cells' where a group of workstations work together through various stages of the production process, with minimum supervision and continuous flow.

As for the future? Héroux-Devtek's success in winning major landing gear deals such as the Boeing 777/777X contract – the biggest in the company's history, with options that could extend into 2028 – and its ongoing work in landing gear manufacturing and MRO means company executives are very optimistic for the future.

“The 777/777X contract is advancing us into the ranks of the world's tier one aerospace companies,” concludes Dallaire. “This is a pretty bold move for a company that started with a single shop in Longueuil on the south shore of Montreal, but it is definitely where we are headed.”

www.herouxdevtek.com