Man Hours To Build A Mooney (Just Wondering)

[HopePilot]

A Rolls Royce takes 450 hours to build by hand.  How many hours did a Mooney 201 (or other model) take?

[aviatoreb]

Quote: HopePilot

A Rolls Royce takes 450 hours to build by hand.  How many hours did a Mooney 201 (or other model) take?

[DaV8or]

I would guess that it depends on how many are being built at once. In 1977 when they were cranking out hundreds of Js I suspect they were faster build times than in 1998 when they were just making less than a dozen.

[fantom]

In 1993, they claimed it was about 3,800 hours. Hard to believe, but I had already bought the MSE, was at the factory, and was talking to manufacturing engineers, not marketing types.

[Saltaire]

As the production engineering supervisor for the factory in the early 80’s, and if my memory hasn’t failed me, it took approximately 1200 man-hours to build a Mooney (J model).

 

Please keep in mind that those hours included building all the detail parts. Sheet metal bits, welded assemblies and subassemblies, seat cushion foam, machined parts, etc, etc, etc.

 

Joe

[HopePilot]

Thanks!  Very interesting.

[HopePilot]

Duplicate post.

[Bill_Pyles]

Clearly, there is one number of hours involved in making all of the details AND assembling the airplane, and another number of hours (much lower) if all the parts for the airplane available and a team assembles the airplane as if it was a kit. 

[KSMooniac]

Quote: Saltaire

As the production engineering supervisor for the factory in the early 80’s, and if my memory hasn’t failed me, it took approximately 1200 man-hours to build a Mooney (J model).

 

Please keep in mind that those hours included building all the detail parts. Sheet metal bits, welded assemblies and subassemblies, seat cushion foam, machined parts, etc, etc, etc.

 

Joe

[Saltaire]

Hi Scott,

 

I fully respect your opinion but if you think with me a minute maybe you can understand how a Mooney could take 1200 hours to build.  Back in the late ‘70s and early 80’s the aviation industry was pumping out over 300 aircraft a week and Mooney was no exception. The highest monthly production rate when I was there was (44) 201/231’s in a single month.

 

There were approximately 400 to 500 employees working in Kerrville at the time so let’s use the 500 employee number. ¼ of the employees were in engineering, administration, sales/marketing, quality assurance, etc. The 1200 hour number is for just those employees that touch product. So our touch labor force is 375 people. A standard manufacturing year contains 1920 man-hours so doing the math that gave Mooney (at that time) 720,000 available touch labor man-hours per year or 60,000 in a single month.

 

If I take my 44 aircraft build in one month and divide into 60,000 available hours we get 1,363.6 hours to build a Mooney. Slightly higher than my recollection but certainly in the neighborhood.

 

Please keep in mind that back in 1978 the GA industry built 17,811 aircraft that year. Figuring 48 working weeks in a year, that would be 371 aircraft per week ( Piper Vero beach was building 15 a day).

 

How did they do it? Unlike today, rivets and all, GA manufacturing employees worked on the same parts and assemblies day in and day out. All the tools, equipment, jigs and fixtures were loaded and building parts every day. The repetitive nature of the work drove the learning curve thus driving the man-hours down.

 

The other way to look it is through a cost model analysis and at 3000 to 4000 hours in just labor you would not be able to sell a Mooney back then for what they sold for.

 

Just some food for thought.

 

 

[thinwing]

that makes sense to me...unlike the guy building the rv who has never done it before,has no permenent jigs or a supervisor to advise or kick butt to motivate..if you seperate out all the major subassemblies...I could see the hour total dropping if one employee or group is doing the same thing daily...doesnt sound like fun or a person would feel satisfaction of a good job done by only rivetting up aileron skins all day using preformed and punched parts...and a jig ..One employee could build 10s per day of these 2500 usd items.Now...its 3/4 workers or vendors looking up how to build up a seatpan...and taking 50hrs on it???kpc

[KSMooniac]

Joe, your numbers start to make sense when considering monthly output and total headcount.  I sure we wish had those numbers again today!  I would bet a dollar that modern Mooneys took a lot more hours, though, due to the low volumes.  Imagine 1200 hrs of labor at $100/hr all-in and we could likely dream about sub-$300k new Mooneys again.    

[donshapansky]

I remember picking up an new 1977 601P Aerostar at the Santa Maria plant and they were trying to get the hours under 5000 to build a Pressurized model. I was told that an Acclaim was in the vacinity of 5000 hrs by knowledgeable source, that was a real problem for MAC.

[DaV8or]

Quote: Saltaire

 How did they do it? Unlike today, rivets and all, GA manufacturing employees worked on the same parts and assemblies day in and day out. All the tools, equipment, jigs and fixtures were loaded and building parts every day. The repetitive nature of the work drove the learning curve thus driving the man-hours down.