Intelligent Manufacturing € December € 1996 € Vol. 2 € No. 12

Boeing Soars with Digital Design

Every year at the AUTOFACT show, the Industry LEAD award recognizes teams from industry for their Leadership and Excellence in the Application and Development of enterprise-wide integrated manufacturing. This year that award went to the Boeing Commercial Airplane Group (Reston, Wash.) for its 777 airplane program, which encompasses such cutting edge technologies as expert systems, 3-D solid modeling, and virtual manufacturing and prototyping, and digital preassembly.

The 777 was 100% digitally designed and preassembled on a computer. Digitally defining the 777 parts, plans and tools allowed engineers to detect over 10,000 part interferences in the initial computer modeling. Under the old system, tooling and assembly plans for 2 million separate parts would not be validated until the first airplane began assembly in the plant. When those 777 parts, built all over the world, were assembled in Seattle, they fit perfectly the first time.

The goal for the 777 program was to cut part interference, fit-up problems and rework by 50%. The company beat its own goals: The overall figures showed a 60-90% improvement. The technologies and processes utilized for the 777, such as the 3-D solid modeling, digital preassembly and artificial intelligence, are now used to develop the company's next-generation 737 airplane.

Boeing selected Dassault Systemes' CATIA (Computer-Aided Three-dimensional Interactive Application) as the preferred CAD/CAM system for developing models and simulating the geometry of an airplane design on the computer (see Intelligent Manufacturing, November 1996). Boeing, Dassault and IBM -- the U.S. distributor of CATIA -- collaborated on developing timetables for the delivery of products and services.

CATIA was enhanced to manage the millions of aircraft parts modeled and allow Boeing to design, build and integrate parts and assemblies. A data management application was added to store and manage all 777 configurations in CATIA. A second application analyzed the interference and fit-up; a third permitted Boeing engineers to do large-scale viewing and manipulation of entire airplane sections. This modification allowed engineers to view up to 500 parts at a time, to electronically assemble major airplane sections and, ultimately, the entire airplane without building a physical mock-up.

CATIA, along with Boeing-created applications, is now used in the fabrication of tools, fixtures, parts and assemblies without costly and time-consuming investment in traditional physical mock-up. Rather than building traditional master models of designed parts and assemblies, engineers could model and simulate manufacturing and engineering processes to evaluate their impact before committing to designing and building a new product.

In the past, many design problems weren't discovered until parts were built and assembled and, because of the complexity of the product, a minor difficulty with one part often meant difficulties throughout the assembly of an entire section of the airplane.

When Boeing launched the 777 program, it formed more than 200 design/build teams of engineering, planning and manufacturing employees -- each focused on particular aircraft systems. With CATIA in place, teams of engineers, planners and manufacturing experts could share their knowledge with one another rather than applying their skills separately in a sequence of steps. The CAD/CAM technologies enabled Boeing to carry the team approach across time and distance in working with suppliers and customers throughout the U.S. and overseas.

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