Round-Clock Strategy Helps Cut Adam's Development Time, Cost

By William B. Scott/Denver
From Aviation Week & Space Tecnology

Adam Aircraft Industries (Booth 3813) might easily be dismissed as just another small company trying to design, build and sell a new general aviation airplane. That also might be a mistake.

Adam Aircraft's A500 production prototype is a carbon-fiber composite airframe powered by two 350-hp. Continental TSIO-550 engines. Only time will tell, but the low-key company could be quietly establishing new standards for rapidly developing and manufacturing aircraft at reasonable cost. Adam Aircraft could have a major impact on the cost-versus-performance measures of general aviation, business and military air vehicles.

Capitalizing on technology gains made by the NASA-led Advanced General Aviation Transport Experiments (Agate), and augmenting them with novel approaches of its own, Adam plans to field a leap-ahead aircraft that realizes Agate's original goal--revitalization of the U.S. general aviation industry. The industry/academia/government Agate program was established in 1994 to "develop affordable new technology, as well as the industry standards and certification methods for airframe, cockpit, flight training systems and airspace infrastructure for next-generation single-pilot, 4-6-place, near-all-weather light airplanes."

On the surface, Adam Aircraft's $935,000 A500 appears to be an unlikely industry benchmark-setter. The six-place, 6,500-pounds-gross-weight, carbon-composite aircraft is powered by twin centerline-thrust, 350-hp. Continental TSIO-550 piston engines driving three-blade Hartzell scimitar propellers. A pressurized fuselage supports two tailbooms joined by a large horizontal stabilizer, and sits atop a 42-foot straight wing.

The cockpit offers sidestick controls, single-lever engine operation and round-dial instruments. Standard avionics will include dual Garmin GNS 530 communication/navigation systems and the S-TEC 55x autopilot. An annunciator panel beneath the glare shield includes yellow master-caution and red master-warning lights.

The A500 will be certified with round-dial instrumentation, jet-like annunciator lights, sidestick controllers and single-lever engine controls. "Even though this is a propeller airplane, there are a lot of jet-like features in it," said George F. (Rick) Adam, the company's founder and CEO. For example, warning lights are needed to alert the pilot of an engine loss. With centerline thrust, the A500 "doesn't yaw or pitch, so we have a [red] light on the panel to tell you a motor was lost, and which one. From a pilot safety point of view, it's a wonderful way to find out you've lost an engine--instead of watching the horizon slide left and right."

The A500 should be certified in the first half of 2003 with full-authority digital engine controls now being tested by Continental. FADECs optimize the fuel/air mixture and timing for each engine cylinder, improving fuel consumption by about 20% over manual operation. Adam Aircraft is working with TCM, Aerosance, Cen-Tex Aerospace and Cirrus Design to establish a Fadec Engine Installers Group aimed at streamlining and coordinating FADEC testing and approval processes with regional FAA certification offices.

The A500 cabin is fairly snug, with four leather passenger seats in a club arrangement, a large airstair entry door and dual overwing escape hatches. A two-seat cockpit is designed for single-pilot operation, but features dual controls.

The A500 features four cabin chairs in a club-seating arrangement. Adam Aircraft designed its own seats as a cost-control measure. The A500 is a slightly modified version of a proof-of-concept model designed by Burt Rutan, president of Scaled Composites. The POC was flight tested for about 300 hr., validating Adam's computer models and identifying areas that could be tweaked for better performance or customer appeal. Compared with its POC predecessor, the A500 has larger elevators, conventional ailerons and flaps, more fuel (230 gallons total), higher power engines (flat-rated at 350 hp. throughout its flight envelope), no cowl flaps or controls and an increased gross weight.

First flight of the No. 1 A500 occurred on July 11. Based on "very preliminary" flight test results, the aircraft appeared to be meeting or exceeding predicted performance numbers, according to chief project engineer Dennis Olcott. For example, with flaps up, landing gear down, and the aircraft weighing 6,200 pounds (mid-range center-of-gravity), it stalled at approximately 79 knots. With full flaps, test pilots have been unable to make the aircraft stall, due to limited elevator power--which prompted a design change to increase elevator travel.

Adam's overall strategy in designing and building the A500 is what sets the company apart. From the outset, its leaders borrowed methods proven in the computer industry and applied them to aircraft development and production. The A500 was designed with modern software tools--such as Unigraphics and Solid Edge--that were only available to large aircraft primes five to 10 years ago. Using computer models validated by the Rutan-designed POC aircraft, Adam engineers ran detailed computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses to optimize the airframe and engine installations.

"With these tools, we essentially have a software wind tunnel," Adam said. "We could trade off pilot visibility and drag by moving the [computer model's] windscreen up or down and changing the rake on it, then run through the [programs] until we had the flow lines we wanted. The software tools let us do very minor improvements very quickly."

For example, computer techniques were invaluable in obtaining laminar airflow across the fuselage, ensuring optimum efficiency of the rear-mounted propeller. Similarly, slight modifications to the A500's tailboom design significantly reduced tooling costs, but with negligible performance impacts.

Another key company innovation is operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week during the A500's development phase. Normally, prohibitive overtime expenditures for labor would preclude a small startup firm from working a round-the-clock schedule while designing and building its first aircraft. But Adam maintains his method is really cheaper than traditional aircraft development approaches.

The company also borrowed another "fix" for a problem the computer industry faced in the 1980s--few top-notch people wanting to work swing and graveyard shifts, because modern lifestyles and child-care needs favored day-only schedules. Consequently, from the outset, Adam Aircraft set up a three-day, 12-hour-shift routine, followed by four days off.
"I've seen this work really well in computer centers and network control operations," Adam said. "With four 12-hour shifts (two per day for two three-day periods), we get six days, 24 hours per day, all on 'straight' time. Then we work voluntary overtime on Sunday. We never make anybody come in Sunday, but we typically have 10 to 15 people here on a voluntary basis."

The combined impacts of Adam's processes have been dramatic. Employees "working a 12-hr.-day, three-day week just love it." This schedule has made it somewhat easier to recruit good employees, retention has been better than industry averages, productivity is excellent and costs are down, Adam said.

"It's like the elves repairing shoes. A lot of stuff happens overnight," he said. "We get the equivalent of 3.5 weeks of work every week when compared to a company that just works days."

The company also encourages employees to become pilots, paying each person a $100/month stipend to take flying lessons. It awards a $500 bonus when an employee gets a private-pilot certificate, and another $500 when he or she logs 500 hr. of flight time. With four aero clubs based at Centennial Airport--where Adam Aircraft is located--employees are allowed to take time off during the day for flight training.

"It's easier to schedule [lessons] during the week than it is on the weekend," Adam said. The flight-training assistance program "isn't very expensive in the great scheme of things--especially when you [consider] lower turnover rates." All Adam's senior managers and sales staff are pilots.

Other strategies to control cost and schedule are to keep as much work in-house as is economically feasible, and use composite technology and materials developed under the Agate program. The company makes its own tooling, using a computer-controlled milling machine to cut master tools from high-density foam blocks. It has a clean room for preparing carbon-fiber fabric, its own curing oven, a well-equipped machine shop and both inertial- and laser-based quality-control inspection gear.

"In the company's early days, we were planning to have the tooling built outside," Adam said. "The average bid was 10 times what it cost us to build it in-house. And since all of our work centers [operate] 24 hr. a day, we can make changes very quickly." Typically, a new tool can be built in 1-1.5 days.

The lowest outside bid for wing tooling was $1.5 million. Adam elected to buy a five-axis numerically controlled milling machine for $300,000, hire a programmer and train its own operators.

A new aircraft company's fate always hangs on its depth of financial reserves and how soon it can sell and deliver enough aircraft to generate positive cash flow. Adam--who has provided most of the financing himself--said the company has enough money to complete development and bring the A500 into production. "One reason we have enough money is we're extremely careful about how we spend money. We're very frugal. And we've been very careful in picking areas where we can innovate."

As of last month, Adam Aircraft held 40 firm orders backed by deposits, and had about another 10 sales in the works, according to executive vp Chris Finnoff. He also serves as CEO and president of spinoff Adam Aircraft Sales. New A500s will be sold both through a distributor network and direct from the factory.

Existing Adam facilities can handle production of 50 aircraft per year, and the company is preparing to lease a 20,000-square-foot building to double that rate, if needed.