CIMPICS in Rolls-Royce-aerospace

Rolls-Royce is one of the United Kingdom´s leading industrial companies. It designs, develops, manufactures and supports gas turbine engines and ancillary equipment for aircraft and for industrial and marine applications. At the very heart of Rolls-Royce is the supply group. It has to produce and purchase everything that is needed to build an aero engine from the huge, high-value parts to the smallest nut and bolt-and it has to provide them on time and at the right cost. A reorganisation of supply group´s manufacturing facilities into smaller shop floor cells has been a significant advance during the latter part of the ´80s and is continuing into the ´90s. These shop floor cells are reducing the lead times for component manufacture, and cutting the investment in work in progress. They are thus permitting a faster response to customer requirements and a reduction in manufacturing costs. The authors discuss the details of this reorganisation which involves CIM, incremental growth techniques, cell scheduling and open systems design