Production planning optimisation for composite aerospace manufacturing

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleResearchpeer-review

External Organisational units

  • Christian Dopppler Laboratory for High Efficient Composite Processing

Abstract

Composite materials proved highly successful for aerospace applications in the last decades, but increased cost pressure forces the composite industry to become more efficient. This requires new manufacturing technologies and optimised processes as raw material costs and labour costs are basically fixed when wanting to keep production on site. Probably the most defining process for aerospace composite production is manual layup of prepreg material with subsequent curing in an autoclave. From production planning view, this combination poses the challenge of transition from discrete layup manufacturing to batch curing processing with the restriction of limited allowed storage time of the prepreg material prior to cure. In this paper, a new approach for production order optimisation at the conjunction of discrete and batch processing is presented. The APOLLO named tool is designed to decrease throughput times, streamline production and increase autoclave utilisation in the composite aerospace industry.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)5857-5873
Number of pages17
JournalInternational Journal of Production Research
Volume57.2019
Issue number18
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 20 Dec 2018