Proceedings of International Conference on Advances in Energy Engineering-2013, ICAEE-1181 181 MANUFACTURING TIME REDUCTION FOR COMPLEX AIRCRAFT COMPONENTS-PYLON, USING CYCLE TIME MANAGEMENT CONCEPT Diljith Abraham SMBS, VIT University, Vellore-632014, Tamil Nadu diljithabraham@gmail.com C Vasantharaju Manager, DLE LCA-PG HAL Bangalore-560017 vasanth_rc@yahoo.com C.D Naiju SMBS, VIT University, Vellore-632014, Tamil Nadu cdnaiju@vit.ac.in ABSTRACT Every country has got a major share of its investments in the defence sector. India has been able to showcase great aerospace capabilities by planning the replacement of the aging fighters with the ICA (Indigenous Combat Aircraft) project. Factors such as renewed customer demands for better performance, quality, support and time constraints and also the increasing change in market demands have led aircraft manufacturing and designing into an ever evolving process. Nowadays, time reduction has major concern and cycle time management (CTM) is used as a weapon to reduce the cycle time in many of the rising manufacturing industries. If the assembly time of indigenous combat aircraft takes around 12 months, the manufacturing of complex components like pylon itself takes 10% of total aircraft assembly time. This paper aims at analyzing the differences in the cycle time between the actual machining time and the estimated time for the manufacture of a complex aircraft component like pylon. The CTM technique used here does not affect the quality, but rather is expected to enhance it and also to meet the increasing market demand within a short duration. Key words: Indigenous combat aircraft (ICA), Pylon, Cycle time management, Time reduction. 1. INTRODUCTION Conflicting goals and objectives arises on designing and manufacturing a military aircraft. India has always been ahead in updating its defence systems. The indigenous combat aircraft project that came into existence in early 1980’s was aimed at improving the fighter aircrafts. It was decided to replace the ageing fighters with a new project called the indigenous combat aircraft. ICA has the delta wing configuration, with no tail planes and features a single vertical fin. It integrates technologies such as relaxed static stability, fly by wire flight control system, advanced digital cockpit, multi-mode radar and integrated digital avionics system, advanced composite material structures and a flat-rated engine.