Bracketing brackets with bras and kets. (January 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Clark, Emily; Vincent, Angelie; Kutz, J. Nathan; Brunton, Steven L.
• Is Part Of: Journal of manufacturing systems. Volume 58(2021)Part A
• Page Start: 384
• Page End: 391
• Publication Date: 2021-01
• Subjects: Machine learning -- Clustering -- Manufacturing -- Standardization -- Dimension reduction; Manufacturing processes -- Periodicals; Production engineering -- Data processing -- Periodicals; Robots, Industrial -- Periodicals; Production, Technique de la -- Informatique -- Périodiques; Robots industriels -- Périodiques; Electronic journals; 670.42
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jmsy.2020.12.018
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0278-6125

Abstract

Highlights: Bracket standardization for efficient aircraft manufacture is considered Hierarchical clustering is used to reduce a set of historical bracket data Many test brackets can be described sufficiently accurately with the reduced set The number of clusters can be varied to balance performance and standardization Abstract: Brackets are an essential component in aircraft manufacture and design, joining parts together, supporting weight, holding wires, and strengthening joints. Hundreds or thousands of unique brackets are used in every aircraft, but manufacturing a large number of distinct brackets is inefficient and expensive. Fortunately, many so-called "different" brackets are in fact very similar or even identical to each other. In this manuscript, we present a data-driven framework for constructing a comparatively small group of representative brackets from a large catalog of current brackets, based on hierarchical clustering of bracket data. We find that for a modern commercial aircraft, the full set of brackets can be reduced by 30% while still describing half of the test set sufficiently accurately. This approach is based on designing an inner product that quantifies a multi-objective similarity between two brackets, which are the "bra" and the "ket" of the inner product. Although we demonstrate this algorithm to reduce the number of brackets in aerospace manufacturing, it may be generally applied to other large-scale component standardization efforts.