The Aviation industry is becoming more and more similar to the automotive industry, at least in the aspects related to the optimisation of production processes. The improvement techniques that were usually associated with the automotive sector have been progressively incorporated in the aeronautical sector, in an increasingly consolidated and personalised way to the manufacturing needs.
The Engineer will be able to enter a virtual factory, even before it physically exists.
Over the last decade, engineers working in this sector have added new terms to our process improvement vocabulary, so we talk more and more frequently about management models and techniques such as Lean Manufacturing and its tools (5S, Standardisation, VSM, etc...), 6Sigma, TQM, Just in time... This trend is mainly due to the strong growth in units produced and to the projected increase in the world aircraft fleet.
The evolution of improvement methods in the aeronautical sector has been much more pronounced with the technological boom, keeping pace with the evolution of computer power and production process simulation software. This change has allowed a intensive use of mathematical modelling established in linear programming, game theory, information theory, dynamic programming, etc... which, due to their complexity, were not implementable in practice. With the current capacity of personal computers this problem has been eliminated and problems of large dimensions can be solved, even in real time.
The manufacturing simulation software is becoming more and more common. and its use has spread considerably over the last 5 years, in some cases becoming the standard operation for obtaining physical and analytical results of plant operation.
Where is process optimisation heading? It is difficult to predict the exact future trajectory of process improvement techniques, however it seems logical to associate its evolution with the development of technology. Through devices such as virtual reality goggles, motion sensors and using increasingly advanced computer programmes, the day seems closer when the engineer will be able to enter a virtual factory, even before physically existing. In this virtual world, the engineer will be able to analyse all the aspects that are of interest to him or her in order to optimising the operation of all processes of the plant.
