LESSONS FROM THE AIRCRAFT FACTORY. Part 1: The hidden simplicity of creating things. The secret to streamlining any development. Practical first hand and proven.

From the Author I am a chartered engineer with over 20 years aerospace experience mostly spent doing the things that are at the core of this book, namely streamlining product development processes and implementing software systems. I have written and recorded this book to pass on knowledge that is difficult to come by, and I hope others will find useful. This book highlights a little-known fact that took me a long time to understand, namely that all development is done in the same way, it conforms to the same pattern. I learned this from the aircraft factory, and it is logical because a single complex product like an aircraft comprises so many different technologies that are all developed as part of the main development project – the airframe, avionics, electrics, software systems, to name just a few. We then come to realise that it is not just products that are developed in the same way, we can extend it to anything we create that did not exist before, for example a new railway or even a new kitchen in a house. There is a simple underlying pattern to all of this. The processes and systems used in aircraft development (and all developments) implement this simplicity. This is the secret to running complex development projects involving tens of thousands of people working for hundreds of companies around the world who create a product with 4 million individual parts, with very little margin for getting things wrong. We will learn the simple underlying pattern. And then the magic happens because this pattern represents the best practice. When a development process complies closely with the pattern it is streamlined. Conversely, where it deviates from it there are problems and inefficiencies. This is how we streamline development processes and manufacturing processes; we compare the way a company works with the underlying pattern. Of course, we can only do this if we understand the pattern that we will learn in this book. In part 2, a separate book, we further expand on the pattern and show how to use the knowledge to streamline any development. It is not complex or overly technical so anyone can understand it whether just for general knowledge or for use in your work. I hope you will enjoy it and find it useful. View Less