Dynamic Scheduling for Aircraft Plating

The metal finishing operations of electroplating, anodizing, etching, stripping and similar wet processes have historically been manual functions in the aircraft industry. This is true of both OEM and overhaul operations throughout the U.S. This paper will describe the increasing use of automation for these processes and how the invention and application of sophisticated computer control programs provide the means to achieve this automation. A special control algorithm that employs dynamic scheduling will be described. Case studies of aircraft finishing applications will be presented.