Orders for the Cirrus SR20 Top 500
As sales continue upward, production rates reach one airplane every five days
Duluth, Minn. - February 15, 2000 - Cirrus Design Corporation reports that SR20 aircraft sales have reached 501 solid orders. An incredible one-fifth of the entire order base has come in since early November. “Clearly a strong demand exists for the SR20 within the general aviation market,” explained Alan Klapmeier, president and CEO of Cirrus Design. Its thrilling to see that demand turn into healthy sales. Presently, the Cirrus manufacturing facility in Duluth produces one SR20 every five days, a rate that will improve in the coming months. According to company forecasts, five airplanes should be built in February and overall production should increase to one plane every working day late this year. To date, 16 SR20s have rolled off the line. Cirrus has been actively applying measures to improve production rates at all three company facilities. For example, tooling is being duplicated, the installation of the SR20 interior is being significantly refined and a second shift of employees is now in place in Duluth. A formal training program also has been established to improve efficiency and expedite the integration of new employees. Cirrus employs 378 people, including 55 employees in Grand Forks, N.D. Cirrus Design Corporation is based in Duluth, Minn. The company designs, manufactures and markets general aviation composite aircraft, incorporating advanced technologies that result in high levels of performance, comfort and safety.
Well, it would make a great calculus word problem, assuming I was teaching such a class this year: “Read the press release, assume the rate linearly ramps from 1 per week to 5 per week by Christmas, when do you get your plane?”
I’m glad to see the company putting out some info about where things stand. And 500 orders is a significant threshhold. The next item on our info-wish-list would be some approximation to the calculus problem that Glenn raises: in what stages or increments is the rate likely to go from one a week to five a week. Maybe instead of calculus we could think of it as some elaborate VOR-DME approach plate, with numerous stepdown points (“2800 feet at 10.5 DME” “2500 feet at 7.9 DME”) en route to a safe landing at the destination.
Well, it would make a great calculus word problem, assuming I was teaching such a class this year: “Read the press release, assume the rate linearly ramps from 1 per week to 5 per week by Christmas, when do you get your plane?”
If it were linear we wouldn’t need calculus…I think the problem involves fitting a quadratic equation to the historical data points and the predicted rate. Don’t forget to throw in the probability factor on the delivery rate at the end of the year (wide confidence interval).
I got a C in college in probability &
statistics, so I won’t go there. You can
still use calculus to integrate the
(assumed) linear ramp-up in production rate to arrive at (as Dave points out) a
quadratically increasing total # of planes produced. I’ll post the plot by the end of the
day and let you know the URL.
This is a complete waste of my time and really speculative…but my real job is much less fun than doing this calculation.
In the future I can re-post the result for discrete step-ups in the production rate, as Jim suggests.
Here it is, as advertised. The graph is based on the following tenuous assumptions: 16 planes have been delivered as of 2/15/2000, the rate is 1 per week right now, and linearly ramps to 5 per week by 12/31/2000 (maybe I should have been more optimistic and used 7 per week?). Starting on 1/1/2001, I assume the production rate holds steady (that is where the graph changes from
parabolic to linear).
http://www.me.ucsb.edu/~beltz/cirrus.htm
Lemme know by e-mail if it doesn’t load well on your browser.
I need to spend more time outside.
Here it is, as advertised. The graph is based on the following tenuous assumptions: 16 planes have been delivered as of 2/15/2000, the rate is 1 per week right now, and linearly ramps to 5 per week by 12/31/2000 (maybe I should have been more optimistic and used 7 per week?). Starting on 1/1/2001, I assume the production rate holds steady (that is where the graph changes from
parabolic to linear).
http://www.me.ucsb.edu/~beltz/cirrus.htm
I agree with Kevin: Are you guys OK?
Let’s interject a dofferent discapline: Logic. Now if your are using faluty assumptions, while your results may be technically TRUE, they are probably very innacuarate.
I think the assumption that the rate of production will accelerate in any sort of linear fashion or that past production rates have anything to do with future acceleration is wrong. If nothing else happens, when a second shift begins work, the rate should almost double. Then as additional refinements are brought into the process, further improvements will come on line. These improvements will be more like a stair step fashion with the steps being different sizes.
Now, Once we can loook in hindsight, I’m sure you math whizzes will be able to construct a formula which fits the historical numbers, but to try to predict future events merely from past events doesn’t seem worth the ,er, ink.
Now why don’t we just assumje that they will hit or come close to 5 planes per week by year end with most of the ramp-up coming later than earlier? I’d rather my surprises be happy ones. till then, I wait and drool over the posts from those who have flown!