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Modern aircraft manufacturing involves drilling and countersinking hundreds of thousands to millions of holes. Doing this work by hand accounts for 65% of the cost of airframe assembly, 85% of the quality issues, and 80% of the lost time due to injuries. Automated drilling and countersinking replaces traditional hand methods and involves using numeric control machinery to drill and countersink a finished hole “one shot” (drilling a finished hole without using pilot holes or tool changes). This is a proven cost reducing technology that improves quality where it has been applied successfully. The focus of this book is on automating the process of drilling and countersinking holes during airframe manufacturing.

The Future of Airplane Factory: Digitally Optimized Intelligent Airplane Factory defines the architecture, key building blocks, and roadmap for actualizing a future airplane factory (FAF) that is digitally optimized for intelligent airplane assembly. They fit and integrate with other FAF building blocks that aggregate to a Digitally Optimized Intelligent Airplane Factory (DOIAF). The word "intelligent" refers to the ability of a system to make right decisions and take right action in the highly dynamic and fluid environment of the modern airplane manufacturing space. The event-driven dynamics inherent in the complexity of this environment drive the need for expert knowledge which resides in intelligence systems incorporating the experience of experts. Expert knowledge need not be smart, brilliant, or possess genius as long as the outcomes are derived from right decisions resulting in right actions-applied rapidly to sustain an optimized factory enterprise.

Up until the last two decades, aluminum in airplanes and steel in automobiles were the primary materials used to produce these two complex machines. These metal-to-metal assemblies, and specifically the same-type metal-to-metal assemblies, have resulted in distinct manufacturing process advantages over decades of production. However, advances in material types have driven manufacturing to adapt and align the fabrication and assembly processes to continue to facilitate a quality product that is reliable, can be manufactured at a price point that is affordable and be manufactured in quantities that can be widely distributed. Dissimilar metal and composite material assemblies are now requiring highly complex manufacturing processes. Innovations in Automotive and Aerospace Assembly addresses how these new, disruptive materials usage are changing the manufacturing and production processes for the transportation industries.

This essential information captures the state of the composites industry to assist engineering/technical professionals in charting a course for achieving economic success. The material characteristics of composites, their applications, and complex composites manufacturing processes depend on many factors. These are all fully considered and presented to meet the challenges that face this marketplace.