Go big or go home! That’s certainly not Panasonic Avionics’ motto, but one wonders if it should be after seeing the company’s gleaming new Ku-band antenna manufacturing and testing facility.
Having secured agreements with airlines to equip well over 1,200 aircraft with inflight high-speed Internet – and with many more deals in the works – Panasonic needed to quickly bolster antenna output. Over the past nine months the company spent several million dollars to build its state-of-the-art, in-house antenna manufacturing facility on site at its headquarters in Lake Forest, California.
“Our Lake Forest Facility will produce 10 units this month. We expect that number to quickly increase to 15 and then again increase quickly to 20 units per month,” Panasonic Avionics VP, global communications David Bruner tells the APEX editor’s blog.
He reveals that Panasonic intends to double the size of the facility and its investment in the coming months.
Even though Panasonic is manufacturing its own antennas, partner EMS – now Honeywell – will continue to manufacture antennas for the company until Panasonic’s facility is operating at full production capacity.
“By March 2013, we will have the capacity in place to produce 50 antennas per month,” says Bruner.
Customers of eXConnect include Cathay Pacific, Gulf Air, Lufthansa, SAS, Turkish Airlines and United Airlines.
Last month I had an opportunity to step inside Panasonic’s new manufacturing facility. Now you can see this complex operation by clicking on the video below.
July 11, 2012 at 8:32 am
Mary,
Did Panasomnic update you about closing the Yoqne’am, Israel antenna production line at the end of June, 2012? All of the hoopla you are getting is, of course, filtered to put the best postitve spin on things. Yoqne’am was supplying the anntenna assemblies to EMS, who then integrated them with the positioner and tested them. Yoqne’am was producing about 10 antennas’s a month and testing them before shipping to EMS. As of April, 2012, the Lake Forst facility did not have a functioning test facility. So even though they may manufacture 10 antenna’s a month there, they cannot test them. They cannot test them, because, as of April, they did not have documenation for test procedures in-house. And it is not likely that they will have complete test procedures documented for sevearl more months because they terminated their technical writer in Yoqne’am that was producing the documentation. And also as of Aril, there was not a single antenna produced at Lake Forest that had passed testing and been installed on an aircraft to evaluae in-flight performance.
So the reality is, they are way behind in deliveries, but cut off 10 antennas a month from Israel. Most likely, a milestone was set last year for closing the Yoqne’am facility, and even though Lake Forest was not fully prepared to compensate, the closing milestone was completed simply as a show to high-level management that milestones were being met.
In general, Lake Forest has demonstrated that they will stumble ahead, ready or not, and waste valuable money just to hit milestones.