Assembling knowledge for the aircraft industry

The MAPAL Group is pooling its global activities in aircraft assembly with its newly founded ‘Global Organisation for Assembly (GOA)’ department. This move reflects the importance and special requirements of the final assembly sector in the aviation industry. Based in France, the GOA encompasses a team of qualified staff backed by an investment in production and testing capabilities.

In Vigneux-de-Bretagne on the outskirts of Nantes, one of MAPAL’s four sites in France, a dozen employees have been permanent members of the GOA since January 2024. If they need support, they can rely on MAPAL France which has 120 employees. Laurent Benezech, Business Development Manager of Aerospace, is responsible for the GOA and works closely with plant manager Thomas Dauteuille.

The GOA is MAPAL’s first Centre of Competence outside Germany. “It is very important for the development of the MAPAL Group to pool our expertise close to our strategic customers,” explains Christophe Potier, CEO of MAPAL France. Christophe has played a major role in the final assembly sector and during the 2009 financial crisis, he investigated the requirements of aircraft assembly at Airbus. After visiting the site, he concluded that although there was great potential here, MAPAL didn’t yet have the right products for it. Adapted tools were developed within one month and successfully tested on-site, putting MAPAL in business. With the additional takeover of a small French tool manufacturer, the company also became a strategic supplier to Airbus.

Around a million bores are drilled to assemble the parts of an aeroplane. The challenge is that the components are made up of layers of different materials such as titanium, aluminium and CFRP in various combinations. As a result, there is no standard range for machining rivet bores. MAPAL primarily provides solid carbide tools for this. These step drills with sharp cutting edges and multi-bladed reamers place great importance on suitable coatings, which MAPAL is constantly developing.

The company is successful with its assembly tool technologies and it now boasts a large number of customers in the aviation industry. The new structure is heavily tailored to the requirements of the sector. “We have to be able to react very quickly. This has been a major challenge for MAPAL and it is the reason for our new organizational unit. Just as important as having the right solutions is a good, tightly-knit network to get the tools to our customers quickly and to support them in using them,” explains Piotr Tyczynski, Global Head of Segment Management Aerospace at MAPAL.

The required capabilities were concentrated and expanded in France. The GOA not only acts as a sales organisation that centrally handles all quotation processing worldwide for the final assembly division. In Vigneux-de-Bretagne, a development department has also been set up for testing customised tools. In addition to measuring all parameters, it is also possible to adjust the tools to the customer’s machining conditions. This is important because the many bores on the aircraft are drilled using semi-automatic or manual machines. Production is only a few metres away from the development department. If modifications need to be made to a tool, this is done within a few minutes and the tests can continue. Solutions can thus be developed in a very short amount of time. In addition, the GOA’s manufacturing unit also produces the first tool series and standardises their production to ensure reproducible results in the Centre of Competence Altenstadt and Toulouse as well as at all MAPAL production sites.

Experience from France is shared with other MAPAL Group sites and it appoints a process expert in each country because on-site support for customers is so important in the assembly field. These experts already exist in the key focus markets and form a network under the leadership of Thomas Dauteuille. Where the relevant knowledge still needs to be built up locally, customers receive centralised support from the GOA.