The Lean Aircraft Initiative benchmarked representative part fabrications and some
assembly operations within its member companies of the defense aircraft industry. This
paper reports the results of this benchmarking effort. Comparisons are made using an
efficiency metric called flow efficiency. Flow efficiency is defined as the ratio of the
fabrication time to the cycle time. In addition, this report explores the major
components of the cycle time: fabrication time, lot process delay, storage delay, and
transportation delay. The report concludes that the major portion of the cycle time in
this industry is storage delay and points out the opportunity to improve cycle time
drastically by reducing the amount of storage delay being experienced in the fabrication
of products
