Current Operations

Marshall manages production for its Manufacturing and Aircraft Repair Organization operations at Cambridge using Reveille Technology's Paperless Factory® System. The system is used to manage the design process, monitor and control inventory, and control production in machine shops and aircraft repair and remanufacturing hangers.

Manufacturing

Manufacturing at Marshall consists of a number of separate machine shops operating a wide variety of machine tools varying from manually operated sheet metal equipment to large-scale CNC milling equipment. Marshall operates extensive metal treatment facilities as well. Marshall Manufacturing builds parts for the Marshall Aircraft Repair Organization (ARO), other Marshall operations, and outside organizations.

In addition to the machine shops, Marshall Manufacturing operates a large engineering design group. Marshall's designed and manufactured major portions of the Concorde as well as modifications for Lockheed L-1011 and C-130 Hercules aircraft. Marshall has designed and manufactured space-rated equipment for the European Space Agency.

Marshall Manufacturing uses The Paperless Factory® System to dispatch and track work through machine shops which are located in a number of separate buildings around the site. The system also is used to manage engineering drawings and engineering change notices. The status of engineering design drawings is monitored as they move through the process of design, stress analysis, weight determination, quality control, and approval.

The Aircraft Repair Organization (ARO)

Marshall Aerospace remanufactures, repairs, and modifies a large number of aircraft types. Marshall is authorized to perform service for the Cessna Citation and Grumman Gulfstream executive jet aircraft. The ARO is an approved Lockheed Aircraft Hercules Service Center and is the RAF Design Authority for the Hercules aircraft. Marshall is also RAF design authority for Lockheed L-1011 aircraft and has designed and manufactured a range of structural modifications to the aircraft. Marshall's recent experience includes: wide body aircraft such as the McDonnell Douglas MD11, Boeing 747, Lockheed C5A, Airbus A310, and Short Belfast; helicopters such as Alouette 318C, Bell 212, Sikorsky S-61N, Boeing Vertol Chinook, and Westland Lynx and Whirlwind; BAC1-11, BAe 146, BAe 748, Boeing 707, McDonnell Douglas DC8, Boeing 727, DeHavilland Canberra, BAC Lightning, Northrop F5E, Tornado, TSR 2, and Valient.

The System

The complexity and size of Marshall operations as well as aerospace requirements for positive control of the manufacturing process dictate the need for a manufacturing execution system. Liquidation damages for late delivery and the potential liability for mistakes on aircraft repair and modification projects can be enormous. The Paperless Factory® System was chosen by Marshall because of the system's ability to track components all of the way through the disassembly and remanufacturing process.

The Paperless Factory® System allows Marshall Aerospace to monitor and control resource utilization including people, machines, inventory, and shop space for very large projects. Aircraft checks can require that several hundred work cards be performed to inspect and overhaul the aircraft. Each work card can contain a number of disassembly, inspection, test, assembly, and certification steps. Work cards also can result in other repair and modification processes being spawned to deal with deficiencies that are discovered in the course of inspections. The Paperless Factory® System allows Marshall Aerospace to select the proper set of work cards for an aircraft check from the several hundred that have been defined by the manufacturer or owner based on the aircraft type, modification history, client, and type of check to be performed; assign the person responsible for each stage and zone of the check by specialty trade; provision the bills-of-material for each work card; track each work order and associated work orders to the Marshall Manufacturing shops for parts; record individual component removal and replacement; and monitor and control the progress of the aircraft check. The system allows management personnel to view the real time status of each project by viewing which work cards have been released to the shop floor, which are still open, and which have been completed.

The Paperless Factory® System has taken the place of a number of different manual, paper-based monitoring and control systems, as well as several software systems developed in-house. The system saves many hours of manual inventory status updating for the previous paper system as well as provides better inventory control. The Paperless Factory® System also has automated time and attendance and labor reporting, eliminating a requirement to check and enter hours manually from paper time sheets.

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