The phrase “survival of the fittest” has become shorthand to describe Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and natural selection as originally published in 1850 in his book On the Origin of the Species. Although the phrase originally was coined by a British economist-philosopher named Herbert Spencer to describe Darwin’s ideas of natural selection, Spencer easily could have been writing about today’s aerospace industry.

“Certainly survival of the fittest describes what has been happening in the aerospace industry,” says Jody Lay, president-CEO of Harbor City, CA’s Hansen Engineering Company, a forty-five-year-old job shop. “In nature, when the environment changes, specie members change with it or they die out. It’s the same in business and especially in the aerospace industry. During the past ten or twelve years, the changes in the aerospace business environment have been drastic, with the result that a lot of companies originally serving the industry no longer exist.”

Toughening Survival Requirements

Hansen Engineering was founded in 1962 as an aerospace job shop. Lay’s father became a partner early on. Jody Lay joined the company in 1978 and is now majority stockholder. His father and two brothers own the rest.

“In the good ol’ days materials were more readily available,” Lay recalls. “Plus, I don’t think the pressure was quite as great as it is now. My personal memory is that back then survival in the aerospace industry was easier.”

So what happened to change the environment?

“In a nutshell? Competition,” Lay says. “Where Boeing and other American companies previously had virtual monopolies in the industry, today there is Airbus and other European competitors. To survive, Boeing and the others have had to evolve. They’ve had to tighten the rules governing the way they play the game. And, of course, they have passed those rules down the line to their first and second tier suppliers. Their message has been plain. Change with us or you’re out. We’ve changed and we’re in.”

What are the new aerospace rules?

“They’re really pretty simple,” says Lay. “The primes want out of the machining business altogether. They want their suppliers to provide bigger, more complex monolithic parts, because they want to slash assembly costs. They want higher precision, smoother finishes, faster deliveries and, of course, constantly reducing prices. If you can meet those demands, play by those rules, you can stay in the aerospace game. Otherwise you’d be better off to find another game.”

Going Lean

Hansen Engineering is old enough to have survived several major recessions and the toughening aerospace rules.

“Just like everyone else in the industry, we’ve been on a roller coaster ride,” he says. “Our sales peaked at one point at nearly $22 million. In 2004 I wasn’t sure we would make it. Today, we’re doing great. At present we have 54 employees working in a 39,000 square-foot facility producing medium-sized aluminum and titanium parts mostly for tier 1 subcontractors. We’ve survived the worst of the aerospace evolution, and right now we’re looking forward to significant growth.”
How has Hansen evolved to meet the new demands?

“We’ve done a lot of things,” Lay says. “We implemented a lean manufacturing program in house ten or twelve years ago. It was part of the Boeing 5S program. You know, Sort, Set In Order, Shine, Standardize, Sustain. Then last year I hired our original 5S consultant, a specialist in AIW (Accelerated Improvement Workshops) and lean manufacturing to oversee our continuing improvement program. One of the first things he told us during the early program was to clean up the shop and we did. Customers don’t want to see a dirty machine shop anymore. Now, his job is to find ways to improve productivity and to introduce those improvements to the people in the shop. It’s amazing how much waste a sharp eye can find and eliminate.”
But as important as finding ways to increase system efficiency is, Lay says that alone is not enough.

“You have to have the right equipment, too,” he says.

Going Mazak

When Lay took over the reins at Hansen, he inherited a shop running Cincinnati mills and a lot of Mazak 3-axis vertical machining centers.
“We had been a Mazak shop for years,” he says, “and we’re still a Mazak shop. Mazak has always treated us very well. We’ve had good service from them when we needed it, though, truth is, we really haven’t needed much help. The machines have been extremely reliable. Even the old ones still hold their tolerance.”

In those days, Hansen Engineering, like most other shops had a one-man, one-machine approach.

“That was the nature of machining back then,” Lay explains. “But with the increased demand for higher productivity and lower prices, I knew that lean procedures alone wouldn’t be enough to keep us in the running. We needed more advanced technology if we wanted to survive. So, about six years ago I bought a Mazak dual-pallet Vortex 815 5-axis vertical machining center. I liked what that machine did for us so much, I bought another Mazak Vortex, this time a 1400. They’re both 50-hp, 10,000-rpm machines. The 815 has 120" by 31"by 24" XYZ travel. The 1400 is bigger with 165” by 55" by 24" travel. Pallets are 60” by 160” on the 1400 and both machines have 60-tool magazines, which has been plenty for us so far. The main advantage of the pallet machines has been an increase in productivity and quality. We’re still operating these machines with the one-man, one-machine approach, but just look at what those machines can do.”

Palletized Productivity

Hansen uses the Mazak Vortex machines to produce large aluminum and titanium aircraft parts, things like struts, bulkheads, structural members.

“I love those twin-pallet machines,” Lay says, “mainly because our productivity has just about doubled on every job we put on them. For instance, instead of running a part in an hour, they run in half an hour or 40 minutes. Or, say a job took 10 or 12 hours before, now it takes only 5 or 6 hours. And that’s just cycle time. Setups are something else altogether. If a part takes an hour to run on a non-palletized machine, you’ll be lucky to run 5 parts in ten hours. That’s because of all the setup time. You’re lucky to get 50% run-time efficiency. With the palletized machines, though, while one pallet is running, the operator is loading the other one. That way we get a lot more spindle running time with an efficiency of 75% or more. That’s the real beauty of the pallet machines.”

Hansen runs two 12-hour shifts and produces a lot of parts on the Vortex machines.

New Project, New Mazak

Hansen recently received a contract to produce a lot of large titanium parts, including bulkheads for Boeing’s newest airplane, the 787 Dreamliner.

“We start with 300 pounds of titanium and cut them down to 70-pound monolithic structures,” Lay says. “This project will require us to take a different approach, because machining titanium is slower than aluminum.”

So far Hansen has not been able to use its Vortex machines to run lights out.

“That’s because our cycle times are too short,” he explains. “But titanium takes longer to run, so we’ve bought a Mazak Integrex 1060 V8-II e machine with a 120-tool magazine and 12 pallets. It gives us powerful new capabilities, plus the ability to run lights out.”

“The e machine is not cheap,” he adds, “but that’s because it’s virtually a complete manufacturing system all in one package. With the Integrex 1060 I’m getting a combination of information and manufacturing technology that’s kind of mind boggling. The 1060 is an advanced multi-tasking machine that will let us produce complete products in one set up, including turning, milling, boring, drilling, etc. We expect this machine to give us a big jump on the competition. We almost can’t wait until it gets here.”

Wait and Hurry Up

Lay says that right now in the aerospace industry, delivery schedules are dictated by the availability of materials.

“Lead time for titanium right now is 100 weeks,” he says. “That’s if you buy in-contract. We recently paid more than half a million dollars for titanium out of contract that normally would have cost only $140,000 in contract. But our customer needed their parts, and they were willing to pay, so we bought the material and made the parts.”
With material lead times so far out, planning and the ability to produce parts quickly once the material arrives, become critically important.
“It’s a matter of waiting for material, then hurrying up to produce the parts,” Lay says. “Which is why I’m happy that we’ve concentrated on creating a lean shop and on having the most advanced technology available. You might say we’ve become lean and mean with a combination of lean and Mazak.”

Lay recently had proof that he’s doing things right.

“We’ve evolved with the industry, and we have more than survived. We’re winning. We recently were named a silver supplier to a Boeing company,” he says. “That means we had a quality acceptance rating of of 99.8%. That’s what our Mazaks do for us. I love it.”

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