Dassault Falcon Jet Doubles Size of Completions Facility

Dassault Falcon Jet is employing its CATIA three-dimensional computer design software at its completions center in Little Rock, AR, in an effort to drive completion times down to three months while increasing capacity to 60 aircraft per year.

The company celebrated the conclusion of a three-year expansion of its completion center, shops and service facility with an open house on the eve of the convention here. As part of ongoing improvements, 22 additional CATIA workstations will be installed in 1999.

The program is used extensively in the completion process to design items like cabinetry, to engineer optional avionics installations, and to develop wiring harnesses. Once a design is established, for instance an aft bulkhead with inlayed, etched mirrors, CATIA is also used to automate manufacturing. In that case, the software can drive computer routers to precisely cut aluminum honeycomb and laminates for the bulkhead, to cut the mirror for a precise fit, and to etch the glass.

Using the software has been a key to driving down completion time while holding the line on quality, says John Rosenvallon, Dassault Falcon Jet president. "The absolute mission we have from the chairman is no compromise on quality ever," he said. "That's a given."

While average completion times are running three months, one week, the company expects to drive that time down to as little as two months for the 38 Falcon 2000s it will deliver to Executive Jet Aviation for its NetJets programs in the U.S. and in Europe. The first NetJets 2000-serial number 71-is now in Little Rock. The reduction is achieved because the aircraft will have a standard interior and optional avionics package.

Over the last three years, the Little Rock facility has grown from 200,000 square feet to 478,500 square feet through the construction of seven new buildings. The construction was undertaken following a corporate decision in 1995 to develop single-facility centers of excellence for all of Dassault's core functions. Employment has grown to nearly 1,400, and by 2000 Little Rock will be the single largest facility in the company.

The growth has enabled Falcon Jet to continue to complete almost all the aircraft it sells in-house. A handful of airplanes are at Dassault Falcon Service in France and at Jet Aviation in Basel, Switzerland. Use of those facilities will enable the company to meet its delivery schedule of 72 aircraft in 2000.

Dassault has been in Little Rock since 1975, when it purchased the Little Rock Airmotive facility from Federal Express, which converted 32 Falcon 20s to cargo configuration there. The facility's first use was converting 41 Falcon 20 Gs to HU-25As for the U.S. Coast Guard. The facility has grown nearly ten-fold since it was purchased in the mid-1970s.

By Perry Bradley