Managing Expectations During Acquisition of Bespoke Automation Systems

A new facility seeks to manufacture inlets for the turbine of the new NDA' aircraft. The inlet is a new design and has never been built before. To complicate matters the manufacturer, Aeron 2 Company, has not traditionally produced any inlets, let alone at the expected production rates for the new aircraft that already has thousands of orders. It was decided that in order to meet demand production must be automated in a similar way to the automotive industry. Aeron, and the commercial aerospace industry as a whole, are inexperienced with automation systems and they believed that they lacked the in-house knowledge to develop and integrate their own automated system. They entered into a contract with a robotics integrator that is has traditionally operated within the automotive industry for delivery of a "turnkey" system. This research covers a six-month period that overlaps with the beginning of Factory Acceptance Testing (FAT) of the automated assembly line. Initial observations hinted at the possibility of a strained relationship between Aeron and its automation integrator. This thesis sought to understand if the relationship was indeed strained, and if so, what were the causes and could it be improved? The Aeron group most involved with this system purchase, referred to as TWS, is used as a case-study to investigate the different factors that can affect an interorganizational relationship during development of a technically complex system. The research and recommendations can be applied to other companies that are involved in inter-organizational relationships founded upon development of technically complex projects. An inductive-deductive iterative approach was used in three phases to conduct this research. Beginning with background research in phase one an inductive approach is used to develop a qualitative model of the inter-organizational system. This model leads to additional questions regarding inter-organizational relationships and their more important factors, such as expectations and trust; namely, what are the expectations that are held by each party in the relationship and what are their impacts? These additional questions are addressed in a deductive manner in phase two. Through the use of surveys sent to different automation teams across the organization, data was collected that reflected the different relationships. These survey results indicate interesting customer perceptions of their respective automation suppliers. At the time of this writing all of the automation projects are perceived to be technically complex, yet some I This is not the real aircraft name, it has been disguised to protect proprietary information 2 This is not the real company's name, it has been disguised to protect proprietary information