Not content with just being a leading Asian airline, Korean Air is also strengthening its foothold in the advanced manufacturing sector while resisting the temptation to expand its operations.
The company’s aerospace division is specializing in producing specific aircraft parts at lower cost, mostly with carbon fiber. It focuses on non-autoclave curing, integral carbon-fiber parts and automation.
Korean Air makes parts for aircraft such as Airbus’ A320 and A350, and Boeing’s 737 and 787. Making parts for the 787 is its largest project, with five contracts for parts for that aircraft. Not surprisingly, Korean Air deploys its most sophisticated advanced manufacturing technologies in that program.
The company builds carbon-fiber composite skins with integrated stringers for the 787’s aft fuselage. The skins are made by loading the stringers into a one-piece tool specifically developed by Korean Air, then laying the skin on them with automated fiber placement. Korean Air’s engineers apply out-of-autoclave process to curing composites used in integral design of aircraft parts such as the 787 aft fuselage. The company is also working towards automated parts assembly.
Reducing or eliminating the use of autoclaves in carbon-fiber part production without using autoclaves can lead to significant cost reductions—avoiding the need to buy, operate and maintain the massive and expensive machines.
Korean Air also finds efficiencies in using its non-autoclave production process in making parts that are similar to each other or are derived from those it already produces. The company already makes doors, control surfaces, wingtips, stabilizers and rear fuselages—it makes wingtips, tip extensions and winglets for the Boeing 737, 747, 777, 787 and Airbus A320 and A330. It also makes A350 cargo doors.
While the manufacturer is considering producing parts that are different from the ones it currently produces, its primary focus is on refining its current capabilities. In fact, expansion doesn’t seem to be the company’s main goal at all. “While increasing revenues is also important, our target is to acquire sustainability based on stable profitability and innovative competitiveness,” it said.
In an industry where falling prices and stiff competition is the norm, the focus on refining its own practices rather than seeking out more revenue seems unorthodox. But it also seems to play to Korean Air’s strengths: Korean Air has carved a space out for itself in the South Korean aerospace industry by focusing on build-to-print contracts.
By relentlessly refining its parts production capabilities, Korean Air has managed to become an advanced manufacturing leader that the world’s leading planemakers, Boeing and Airbus, continue to rely on.
Read more about how planemakers are using advanced manufacturing at New Metal Additive Manufacturing Technology Coming to the Aerospace Market.