Advanced Multi Axis Trim and Drill Cell for Low Volume, Multiple Part Configuration in a JIT Environment

The aerospace manufacturing arena is a constantly evolving challenge to all of the participants. The conjuncture of continual cost-cutting pressures and product changes have created technical and system challenges to implant a manufacturing infrastructure that can cope and deliver widely different parts. All this in a climate of shorter delivery schedules and more complex parts geometries produced by advanced CAD systems. The challenge for equipment configuration is to create highly flexible robust machine configurations that can be adapted to multiple part configurations in the most efficient manner. This paper will research the inherent challenges in implementing automation into a highly manual operation where the technologies have to facilitate the flexibility yet ensure strict control of part variation. It will explain the technology mix required to integrate into an optimized machine configuration to process flow of parts in a JIT environment where hundreds of different parts have to go through a similar process in the minimum amount of time with maximum reliability