When we’re talking about an old flight control system, everyone in the flight industry knows that it was the airframe who had the task of fully defining the system before it would be put out to tender. However, in the more recent developments, it seems that the focus has been put on an open period of system definition, where the customer will work closely with the system supplier in order to jointly develop the system definition. By adopting a collaborative systems approach to engineering, the process has now improved a lot and as a result, there is less duplication of effort.
There are many benefits of this process and they include optimized system components, a cleaner supplier\customer interface, a better understanding of the full requirements by the supplier and customer; all of this is very beneficial to the entire process which will eventually lead to a cost effective and technologically advanced solution being engineered.
There have been many lessons the aviation industry has learned from this project, mostly in the areas of supplier management and customer management, but also in dealing with the difficulties in managing a very complex systems as this one. That is why when it comes to future projects, great and precise management will be mandatory in controlling systems that are becoming more and more complex. And if you take a closer look at this from a historical point of view, the provision of flight control systems has developed quite slowly, but at a certain steady pace along the years.
If you take a look at the past, you will realize that in the early days, the flight control system was invariably mechanical and this means that the pilot was linked directly to the control surfaces. As a result, he could actually feel everything that was happening around him, which led to the creation of very simplified systems.
However, it was only a matter of time until these systems started getting more complex and that was mostly driven by the need of reducing operation costs and aircraft weight.
