TY - JOUR
T1 - Level of automation (LOA) in aerospace composite manufacturing
T2 - present status and future directions towards industry 4.0
AU - Jayasekara, Deepesh
AU - Lai, Nai Yeen Gavin
AU - Wong, Kok Hoong
AU - Pawar, Kulwant
AU - Zhu, Yingdan
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China ( U1809218 ), Ningbo Key Projects of Science and Technology Innovation 2025 Plan ( 2019B10118 , 2020Z116 ), Instrument Development Project of CAS ( YJKYYQ20200029 ), and the UNNC-CNITECH Doctoral Training Partnership program ( 19103DTPNB ). We also wish to acknowledge our gratitude and appreciation to all those who contributed to the development of ideas and concepts presented in this paper. We would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 The Society of Manufacturing Engineers
PY - 2022/1
Y1 - 2022/1
N2 - Composites have become the go-to material of the aerospace industry during the past decades and a significant uptake in composite materials for aerospace applications was evident in recent years. Both expert academics and industry practitioners believe, to meet the future demand, the level of automation in the aerospace composite manufacturing process chains must be improved. The main focus of automation in composites so far has been given to automate siloed operations but limited attention has been paid to end-to-end integration of the process chains leading to inefficiencies, rising operational costs, and low productivity. This paper intends to compare and contrast the level of automation (LOA) in different aerospace composite manufacturing process chains to identify where the LOA triumphs and lacks. For this purpose, core-process and sub-process tasks involved in commonly used manufacturing process chains (i.e. Filament Winding, Automated Tape Layup, Automated Fiber Placement, Resin Transfer Molding, and Pultrusion) are identified by conducting a detailed literature review and verified by the experts. Then, the process chains are mapped and visualized to understand the workflow. Later, these tasks are evaluated based on an established LOA taxonomy developed for manufacturing processes. The study reveals that even the popular ‘automated’ processes are developed in silos and do not show consistent higher LOA throughout their process chain. While core-process tasks show intermediate LOA (Level 5–6), most non-value-added activities show poor LOA (Level 1–4). Most importantly, none of the tasks involved in the existing composite manufacturing process chains have reached a higher LOA (Level 7). The paper reveals that focusing on sub-process tasks, and tasks that lack automation should be the next step towards achieving fully automated composite manufacturing and presents a two-pronged approach to realize Industry 4.0.
AB - Composites have become the go-to material of the aerospace industry during the past decades and a significant uptake in composite materials for aerospace applications was evident in recent years. Both expert academics and industry practitioners believe, to meet the future demand, the level of automation in the aerospace composite manufacturing process chains must be improved. The main focus of automation in composites so far has been given to automate siloed operations but limited attention has been paid to end-to-end integration of the process chains leading to inefficiencies, rising operational costs, and low productivity. This paper intends to compare and contrast the level of automation (LOA) in different aerospace composite manufacturing process chains to identify where the LOA triumphs and lacks. For this purpose, core-process and sub-process tasks involved in commonly used manufacturing process chains (i.e. Filament Winding, Automated Tape Layup, Automated Fiber Placement, Resin Transfer Molding, and Pultrusion) are identified by conducting a detailed literature review and verified by the experts. Then, the process chains are mapped and visualized to understand the workflow. Later, these tasks are evaluated based on an established LOA taxonomy developed for manufacturing processes. The study reveals that even the popular ‘automated’ processes are developed in silos and do not show consistent higher LOA throughout their process chain. While core-process tasks show intermediate LOA (Level 5–6), most non-value-added activities show poor LOA (Level 1–4). Most importantly, none of the tasks involved in the existing composite manufacturing process chains have reached a higher LOA (Level 7). The paper reveals that focusing on sub-process tasks, and tasks that lack automation should be the next step towards achieving fully automated composite manufacturing and presents a two-pronged approach to realize Industry 4.0.
KW - Aerospace
KW - Composite manufacturing
KW - End-to-end integration
KW - Industry 4.0
KW - Level of automation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85119276437&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jmsy.2021.10.015
DO - 10.1016/j.jmsy.2021.10.015
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85119276437
SN - 0278-6125
VL - 62
SP - 44
EP - 61
JO - Journal of Manufacturing Systems
JF - Journal of Manufacturing Systems
ER -
