Optimization of Aircraft Fuselage Assembly Process Using Digital Manufacturing

Abstract

The work demonstrates the benefits of using digital methods for the development and optimization of large assembly manufacturing networks. Although an aircraft assembly has been used for this work, the methods and advantages of digital manufacturing techniques, which are demonstrated here, are equally applicable to any large assembly process, such as those used in the automotive, railway, and shipbuilding industries. The introduction of manufacturability into the design arena using advanced computer aided methods means that manufacturing engineers can operate more directly in assembly planning and concurrent engineering design. Network analyses carried out on the final assembly operations for a regional jet fuselage section using a methodical, step by step approach, shows that the process efficiency for workers carrying out fitting operations can be more than doubled when compared to existing shop floor performance figures. The more efficient use of operator time results in a simulated 19% improvement in financial efficiency, as the actual working hours required for assembly are reduced to below budgeted levels. The simulation predicts that these results can be achieved with one final assembly station. With two stations currently in use for the fuselage section, this means that a significant financial saving is possible in tooling expenditure.

Collaborative Engineering Paradigm Applied to the Aerospace Industry

“…It takes as input developments from previous projects, related to digital manufacturing techniques implementation [6,8] and aircraft conceptual design modeling [9]. Similarly to other initiatives reported in literature [10][11][12], the main results will be definition and modeling of collaborative working procedures, and their implementation into collaborative software tools. The project aims to demonstrate:…”

Assembly process optimization for reducing the dimensional error of antenna assembly with abundant rivets

“…the collision-free path planning (Lee and Park 1991), the AND/OR precedence-constraint assembly scheduler (Chen 1992), the job shop scheduling for a service industry , the fuzzy extension of the simple assembly line balancing problem of type 2 (Zacharia and Nearchou 2012), and a summarization of assembly sequencing by Jiménez (2013). Due to the logic complexity, the purpose of most AS planning literatures mainly lies in searching shorter AS and/or more operation feasibility, rather than considering more parameter uncertainties or more system logic (Agnetis and Macchiaroli 1998;Butterfield et al 2007;Wang and Liu 2010;Xu et al 2012;Ni et al 2013a). In addition a new multi-objective optimization framework that omits the riveting-induced dimensional error firstly fulfils the sequence design for hundreds of automatic riveting points (Xiao et al 2012).…”

Aeronautics design and manufacture integrated enterprise model

“…Model based manufacturing includes model-based process design and model-based manufacturing execution [8]. Model based process planning is based on product design results, and the process planning of product manufacturing process is the direct basis of product manufacturing process.…”