Cost reduction of electro-hydrostatic actuator production at Parker Hannifin Aerospace, control systems division

The purpose of this study was to determine if a new production process could be created to reduce the production costs to perform the necessary assembly and testing of Electro-Hydrostatic Actuators (EHA) at Parker Hannifin Aerospace, Control Systems Division in Irvine, California. A production representative, single hydraulic system EHA was used to perform the process analysis.; Review of the production processes indicates that the fill and bleed task contributes the majority of the required time and has the greatest potential for being simplified to reduce total production process time. A series of production methods to simplify the fill and bleed task were performed and results compared using One-Way ANOVA analysis.; The results of this study indicated that a new production process can be introduced that reduces the EHA assembly and test time by 24.1% resulting in a predicted savings of 26.6 million USD through the year 2036.