Mooney Boasts Of 20% Decrease in Aircraft Construction Hours -- in One Month

Here's an interesting piece of news. It seems that the Mooney folks are crowing about some recent developments that would tend to bode well for the birds with the backward tail. Mooney Airplane Company announced that it had succeeded in decreasing the total number of hours required to construct a Mooney aircraft by over 20% from September to October.

J. Nelson Happy, Mooney president, reported: "The company was able to reduce the total unit hours spent constructing an aircraft from an average of 4,400 hours in September to 3,535 hours in October 2003. This is a remarkable step forward and all of our employees need to be congratulated. This is over a 20% decrease in labor hours, and will go a long way to reducing our manufacturing costs."

Robert Collier, Mooney's director of production, stated: "I am proud of our people for being able to make such a drastic reduction in labor hours. I am sure that we will be able to make further reductions as the assembly line becomes smoother. Everyone is working harder and smarter, and I believe our new systems are starting to work well."

According to Mr. Happy, "We are starting to see that our production systems are more efficient than in the past, and it is encouraging all of us to find more ways to cut costs as we go forward."

In additional remarks, exclusive to ANN, Happy explained that their current success was simply a matter of "getting the assembly line working normally." This effort produced a "dramatic drop" in work hours and foretells a strong additional commitment from staff and management to pursue another 20 percent reduction in production requirements. "Now, we're rolling," said Happy, noting that the additional 20% percent reduction was going to be harder to achieve than the first, but that everyone at Mooney felt confident that they would "make a big dent" in reaching that goal.

Mooney Airplane Co., located in Kerrville, Texas, currently sells three models; the Bravo DX, and its stablemates, the Ovation2 DX and the economical Ovation. Mooney is celebrating its 50th anniversary in Kerrville, Texas, this year, where it has manufactured more than 10,000 aircraft that have been delivered worldwide.

FMI: www.Mooney.com