A Study on the Development of Aerostructures Design for Assembly Guidelines and Their Effective Use to Proactively Identify Opportunities for Improvement in Mitigating Common Defects of the Aerostructures Assembly

An Aircraft’s assembly process plays a vital part in its design, development and production phases and contributes to about half of the Total cost spent in its entire product lifecycle. Design For Assembly (DFA^®) principles have been one of the proven effective methodologies in Automotive and Process industries. Use of DFA^® principles have resulted in proactively simplifying and optimizing engineering designs with reduced product costs, and improved efficiencies in product design and performance. Standardization of Assembly guidelines is vital for “Design and Build” and “Build-To-Print” manufacturing supplier organizations. However, Standardizing design methodologies, through use of proven tools like Advanced Product Quality Planning, (APQP) are still in the initial stages in Aerospace part and process design processes. Thus, there is a tremendous opportunity for research on the application of the existing DFA^® guidelines to optimize Engineering Aerospace Assembly processes aiming to simplify, standardize design methodologies by building on existing industry practices which have a common platform for design communication and are easy to adopt within the existing process/systems. This technical paper is to discuss the framework for application of DFA^® principles and design guidelines specifically aimed for engineering optimization of Aerospace Assembly Process Designs. The Aerospace DFA^® implementation framework proposed in this paper is based on the study on the application of the existing DFA^® guidelines proven and used in other Process industries to Aerospace Part and Process Design and development. This paper collates the findings, experiences and learnings gained during the study collated from a research point of view using Six Sigma methodology DMAIC and DMADV. This paper also focuses on the use and publication of this research outputs on Aerospace industry applicable DFA^® guidelines, which can be used as a reference for emerging Aerospace designers in their future and current designs.