Digital Factory Fast Becoming Reality

One of the world's most advanced computer simulation programs has been developed by Fairchild Dornier to ensure what it believes will be the smoothest, most efficient and cost-effective assembly line in commercial aviation for its 728JET regional airliner.

"This is so advanced that even Airbus has asked us about it as it prepares to produce the A380," said Rudolf Schmid, head of digital manufacturing at Fairchild Dornier.

Schmid and his team have taken two years to understand better than anyone every process that will be involved in assembling the 728JET, from trucking the center section from Spain to how many engineers can work simultaneously on assembly jobs in the confines of the cockpit.

"We know exactly what it takes to do every job, and exactly how much it costs," Schmid told Show News.

The result is that the factory has already been planned on computer, not only for layout but for the flow of every part, every tool and the precise order in which every job must be done. The simulation was based on an intensive study of assembling the 328JET that resulted in efficiencies of 20%, and the computer model has in turn been verified on the 328JET line.

Leaning heavily on automotive manufacturing processes, the simulation also includes ergonomic factors. The program incorporates "live" workers on the screen, and ensures they can physically do the job without banging heads on airframe projections or rapping knuckles on nearby bolts. So accurate are these representations that Fairchild Dornier believes it can use them later for training, or for an engineer at an airline to simulate a repair and watch exactly how it should be done.

With a brand new, clean-sheet design for the airplane, Fairchild Dornier had the chance to plan the most modern factory and tooling for it, rather than adapt existing facilities. The first development aircraft-which were simulated in mockup form in the computer-are being built on production tooling designed by the digital manufacturing team and which is now being installed at the Oberpfaffenhofen plant.

"We are not cutting any corners at all," said Fairchild Dornier president and CEO Louis Harrington. "This is going to be one of the most advanced assembly lines in the world."