Integrated Manufacturing Planning Approach for a High-Mix, Low-Volume Product Mix

A typical aerospace part will be designed, planned, programmed, tooled, reviewed and then qualified using a first article inspection process before it is produced. Using this traditional methodology, it is common to expend large amounts of resources planning a part only to have to modify the manufacturing planning based on the outcome of the first article. This is a costly and time-consuming activity. It is also possible, based on the number of similar parts and the number of planners, to have near identical parts planned differently. This is unfortunately common when there are a lot of very similar parts across a company's product offerings. Companies who lack standard engineering producibility processes as well as standard manufacturing planning processes will also face increased production costs due to variation amongst similar parts. Using an integrated manufacturing planning approach, these costs can be minimized.