Martin-Baker

Source: Manufacturing Digital

Date :11/04/2008 15:42:22

Having saved 7233 lives to date, Martin-Baker has developed reliable escape systems for aircraft since the Second World War. Peter Lewis explains the technology behind the statistics

Written by Lucy Mowatt and Produced by Rahim Ali

With experience manufacturing ejection seats and escape systems dating back to the 1940s, Martin-Baker is the oldest company in its market and has saved in excess of 7000 lives since it was established. Although it has grown significantly, Martin-Baker is still a family owned business, run by the sons of Sir James Martin, the company’s founder.

“The military aerospace market is huge; our company is dominant in the escape systems niche I guess,” Peter Lewis, head of operations says. Having worked for the company since 1985, he has seen Martin-Baker become a dominant player in the aerospace industry.

“The company has a reputation for the fact that its products work well,” he explains. “They are reliable. The recovery rate is high; it is pretty much 100 percent.” Although there can be complications with escape, such as landing in the sea or pilot injury, Martin-Baker does everything it can to prevent such problems. “For example, a lot of pilots end up in the sea; we spent a lot of time on automatic life vest inflation devices and providing pilots with a dinghy in order to give them every chance of escape,” Peter says.

Expanding expertise

Because of its commitment to reliability and covering every eventuality, Martin-Baker has secured clients from all over the world. “[BAE] are certainly our largest customer in the UK because they pretty much make all UK military aircraft now, so we have an ongoing relationship with BAE. We have done Tornados in the past; we do Hawks still, which is quite an old design now. We’re working on the Eurofighter, which is the latest new fighter. We’re also working with them for the cockpit on the American Joint Strike Fighter.”

In recent years the company has also sought new markets and customers. “It’s not like consumer products, where you have a sales campaign and start selling. What you do is identify an aircraft program and then get onto it,” Peter says. The company has become the preferred supplier of ejection seats for Korean manufacturers as their air force grows, and Martin-Baker is currently working hard to build relationships with customers in Pakistan and India.

Although this will be a big project for Martin-Baker, research is a constant focus for the company. As such, it is making investments in its facilities; the pyrotechnic assembly plant at Chalgrove has seen significant investments in order to expand capacity, while the company has also built partnerships with subcontractors around the UK and Europe in order meet surges in demand. “We’ve been talking to companies further east in India and places like that about taking the extra load,” Peter adds.

Testing and Qualification

In total, Martin-Baker runs four facilities; in Higher Denham, Middlesex, Chalgove Air Field, Oxfordshire, Langfield Lodge, Northern Ireland and Pennsylvania in the US. The Chalgrove site is able to undertake both static and airborne testing, while in Northern Ireland Martin-Baker owns a rocket test track. This sled can fire a fuselage at speeds of up to 600 knots with the use of a rocket, which will simulate high speed, low level ejections.

“We’ve got considerable capacity to do testing, rather than going out to test houses and having to use other people,” Peter explains. “It’s exclusively used for our own development and is one of our competitive edges.”

The design and manufacture of Martin-Baker escape systems are also certified to ISO 9001 standards. It has a number of other approvals from authorities too such as the MOD and CAA/FAA. Customers are encouraged to audit Martin-Baker’s facilities themselves as well, in order to ensure that everything meets their exacting standards.

Investing in technology

Peter Lewis was keen to emphasise that although Martin-Baker is not a large company, it has processes in place that most customers expect to find at big organisations. “We’ve got simulation and 3D modelling and that type of thing, and we’ve got all the latest stuff here.” SAP is also in place to manage systems.

“SAP is typically a system used by multimillion dollar organisations. With the wide range of things we do here and the amount of data we use, we’ve actually got a SAP system, whereas many companies our size may have invested in something less sophisticated.

“I think at the moment, in our system, we have 150,000 part numbers and at any one time 31,000 will be live, with orders and stock,” he explains.

In order to maintain the growth of the business, Martin-Baker, is very dependent on its people. With approximately 630 employees based in the UK and 70 in the US, the business tries to keep its headcount stable, absorbing extra business with subcontractors, as aforementioned.

“Two or three years ago it was extremely difficult to find qualified engineers, but recently we have started to recruit people from outside the UK,” Peter states. Since then the company has bolstered its staffing figures with skilled employees from the EU, where the labour pool is larger.

As the aircraft market continues to become more advanced, Peter points out that Martin-Baker has started to look into the development of new systems for future security. Although the company has been making ejection systems since the 1940s, the rise of unmanned jets has reduced the need for such equipment.

“We looked at where our expertise was...and the obvious product for us to get involved with was crash seats for helicopters,” Peter explains. Pilots are starting to demand safer seats which collapse when the helicopters crash so that there is a greater chance of survival.

Although this is a relatively new market, Martin-Baker is already striving towards becoming its leader. With stong and successful existing relationships with large military clients, it will be able to harness new customers and maintain its lead. The company has already secured a contract with the helicopter manufacturer Sikorsky and is securing a market for the future.

Click here to view the corporate brochure on Martin-Baker