Using Discrete Event Simulation in multiple System Life Cycles to support Zero-Defect Composite Manufacturing in Aerospace Industry. Issue 13 (2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Steringer, Robert; Zörrer, Helmut; Zambal, Sebastian; Eitzinger, Christian
• Is Part Of: IFAC-PapersOnLine. Volume 52:Issue 13(2019)
• Page Start: 1467
• Page End: 1472
• Publication Date: 2019
• Subjects: Discrete-event Modeling -- Simulation -- Zero-Defect Manufacturing -- Decision Support Systems -- Automated Fiber Placement -- CFRP Production -- Aerospace Engineering -- Digital Twin; Automatic control -- Periodicals; 629.805
• DOI: 10.1016/j.ifacol.2019.11.406
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2405-8963

Abstract

Abstract: Visual inspections performed by operators are very time-consuming in the manufacturing process of carbon fibre parts in aerospace industry In the EU research project ZAero (Zero-defect manufacturing of composite parts in the aerospace industry) in-situ manual inspection on fibre placement stations thus shall be replaced by automatic inline inspection. To quantify the improvements of the suggested process changes, a series of experiments performed by a discrete event simulation (DES) model was needed to provide necessary key performance indicators (KPI). As the new inline inspection detects events and provides a lot of additional data for them, the simulation model proved to be very useful to support a decision support system (DSS) to help decision makers in determining which of the events count as defects and need to be reworked. In our work we show that a DES model, when properly implemented, is as versatile as a Swiss knife and can make valuable contributions to more than one life cycle of manufacturing systems.