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Aviation History
1999
1999 - 2709.PDF
MANUFACTURE fZXJJMOLOGY Boeing and Northrop Grumman have combined forces to bring construction of the 747 into the 21st century GUY NORRIS/SEATTLE L ATE NEXT MONTH a 747-400 des tined for Japan Airlines (JAL) will roll out of Boeing's Everett manufacturing site in Washington. On the outside it will look just like any other -400, but a close inspection will reveal a different story. This aircraft, line number 1236, is the first fuselage to be completely assembled using a "snap together" technique known as FAIT - or fuselage assembly improvement team. FAIT was made possible by another initiative, pro posed in 1994, known as AFA, or accurate fuse lage assembly. AEAand FAIT are symbiotic and used to drive numerically controlled equipment to produce precisely the "super panels" which form the 747 fuselage. These consist of two or more panel assemblies that join together and are mated to frames to form even bigger assemblies. These large sections are shipped, generally by rail, to Everett for final assembly. The precise manufacturing of the new panels reduced the enormous variability inherent in the manufacturing of such large pieces and cut down on the hugely expensive rework of panels to make them fit once they had arrived at Everett. The variability was largely caused not only by the sheer size of some of the parts, but also by the wear and tear on the ageing manu- AFA/FAIT integration process Phase l/ll • Skin trimming & drilling • Automated stringer drilling > CNC riveting • Integration into sub-assemblies P 1 Phase I Final assembly with precision frames FAIT:- Fuselage Assembly Improvement Team Barrel implementation form a two-pronged attack by Boeing and 747 fuselage maker Northrop Grumman on cycle time and cost. The exercise's goal is a 40% cut in assembly flow time over the next five years. It forms a major element of the company's aim of being able to reduce to six months the time span from the start of construction to delivery- less than half the current time. AFA used Boeing's now standard IBM/Dassault CATIA (computer-aided three- dimensional application) system to digitise the original mylar engineering drawings, many of them dating from the 1960s, of the skin panels and associated hardware. The CATIA data are facturing jigs at Northrop Grumman's Hawthorne plant in California. Northrop Grumman, which produces around 25,000 parts for each 747, signed a strategic alliance with Boeing over the AFA pro posal in late 1994. In April 1997 it delivered the first parts produced using the new process. Boeing, meanwhile, also began to plan ways of taking advantage of the new method. Rodger Riggers, Boeing's FAIT programme manager since the start of the effort, recalls that "after the AFA implementation, Northrop Grumman said to Everett: 'Now what are you going to do?' That's how FAIT was born." The FAIT concept was developed in the third quarter of 1995 and built entirely on the bene fits of the CATIA-based AFA process at Hawthorne. Boeing took advantage of the pre cise manufacturing of the super panels to ditch its own ageing assembly and manufacturing tooling. It simplified the way the aircraft could be put together by minimising the variation in the size of parts and the location and size of holes. Precision "golden holes", located every 50cm (20in), were suddenly available to "self- locate" the panels to each other. This process, known as determinate assembly, uses part-to- part indexing, rather than the conventional part-to-tool indexing system used in the past. CHANGING OLD WAYS A vital element of the switch to the new process was the gradual change-over from die old to the new. A three-phase programme was started, with the AFA hardware arriving slightly before the implementation of the new tooling at Boeing. Under Phase I, the early drawings were digitised by the third quarter of 1996. Northrop Grumman delivered the first Section 42 AFA section in early April 1997, followed two weeks later by the first Section 44. With Phase II under way, the first of the larg er aft Section 46 panels arrived in May 1997. The first aircraft to incorporate an AFA-built Section 44 panel began rolling down the line last October, with implementation the same month of the first FAIT tooling at Everett under Phase III. Section 42 improvements were insti tuted over six months at the end of last year and die start of this. Section 46 hardware began arriving in April and loading into die new tooling injuly. Aircraft incorporating some sections made using the advanced AFA/FAIT processes have dierefore been in service since early diis year, but the JAL FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 15 - 21 September 1999
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