Rise Of The Machines

At the same time, production of the A350 is also increasing. Despite a slow start in 2016, Airbus plans 50 A350 deliveries to customers this calendar year, compared with 14 in 2015.

All this presents lots of challenges, including ensuring its facilities are equipped with the right tools and technologies to manage that growth.

To that end, the European manufacturer is, often in partnership with other companies and startups, developing new practical applications that it hopes will give its workforce the best opportunity to build aeroplanes more quickly while keeping the same high quality demanded by its airline customers.

Some of those concepts on display at the Airbus Innovation Days media briefings held in Hamburg at the end May seemed a little far fetched, or perhaps more at home in the realm of science fiction, suggesting no stone is being left unturned in the quest for a more efficient production line and a more technologically advanced product in the air.

Wearable limbs

Airbus has developed wearable limbs called exoskeletons to help workers more easily lift heavy machinery and do repetitive tasks without placing undue strain on their bodies.

The suit on display at Innovation Days, which resembled something a TV cameraman wears when covering a football game or cricket match, was for a drilling unit at the wing to fuselage join interface.

“This tool is about 12kg,” Airbus chief operating officer Tom Williams said.

“I am reasonably fit, I like to think I work out and look after myself but I tell you if you do 600 holes at 12kg with that it gets to be a heavy job and clearly that often leads also to quality issues.

“That is a reflection of the rate increase which we have to deal with, but also an ageing population. The reality is we’ve got to manage that with a combination of young guys and old guys. ” Airbus is also using unmanned vehicles to conduct inspections on riveting and the like, compared with cherry pickers previously that had the potential to cause damage to newly-built aircraft.

3D printing has many applications

Three-dimensional printing is playing an important role in Airbus’s production lines, where wing and cabin parts are being made to mimic nature – such as the cell structure of waterlilies – to improve strength and durability while reducing weight.

To that end, the A350 features about 1,000 parts that have been made via three-dimensional printing, from wing components to cabin brackets.

Further, the use of 3D printing has significant benefits for the supply chain. Instead of storing parts and components in a warehouse and shipping them to where they are needed, the design is held in a digital file and the parts printed on demand. Some 3D printed parts are 90 per cent quicker to make and 75 per cent cheaper compared with current production methods.

“If you think about spare parts, you know normally you have a lot of inventory, you have long lead times, you have to maintain tools which are 30 years old,” Airbus head of engineering technologies and concepts Peter Sander explained.

“With the 3D printing it is possible to do these parts on demand and at the location where you need them. ” Airbus has also built a test aircraft called THOR (Test of Hi-tech Objectives in Reality) from components made via 3D printing. The aircraft – see title pic – weighs about 25kg, is about 4m long and has a wing span of 4m, and first flew in November 2015. There were about 18 missions planned for 2016 to test new aerodynamic concepts.

“We will be able to speed up our development processes for the future . . . print it in a week, try it out, do a different one next week,” Sander said.

Printing rather than painting aircraft

Traditionally, Airbus has decorated aircraft vertical tails, one of three ways – with an adhesive film that had a clearcoat overcoat applied, building up the design by painting layer by layer via airbrushing, or through a dot/hexagon stencil process where thousands of dots are applied.

However, as airlines’ designs become more and more complex, the limitations of these traditional methods have prompted Airbus to seek a new approach, leading to direct printing technology.

So instead of painting onto an adhesive film, the technology sprays ink directly onto the base coat of the vertical tail with a special inkjet head. The ink is then sealed with a clear coat to finish.

“We print exactly the same as your ink jet printer at home – line by line – until the whole image is there,” the head of the Airbus A320 Family paintshop in Hamburg Ralph Maurer said.

The first of the tails to feature direct printing technology was delivered to Thomas Cook Airlines in March 2016. Airbus said there was a 3kg weight saving, while just 500ml of ink was used, benefiting the environment.

And Airbus does not intend to stop at the tails, with a study looking into using digital printing technology for an entire aircraft.

“It’s a long way away, maybe not quite as long as you think. That is basically our goal at some stage in the future, printing complete aircraft instead of painting them,” Maurer said.

Digitisation a focus

And then there is the growing importance of digitisation across all parts of the business.

“I have to admit we were lagging behind and for the last 12 months we have really pressed upon the proof of concepts in some industrial initiatives but also engineering, customer support, production and of course development of our products,” Airbus chief executive Fabrice Bregier said.

“We are nicely catching up and it will be a big breakthrough in many areas. ” Airbus Group digital transformation officer Marc Fontaine said digital transformation was focused on three main areas – improving internal operations, growing in services and improving products, and to invent disruptive business models.

To that end, the 450 or so Airbus pilot initiatives are across all parts of the company from finance to human resources and procurement, with the use of smart glasses on the A330 assembly line, digital control rooms, guided robots and the use of analytics and big data all under assessment.

“We have run already three or four proof of concepts on a very large scale, especially starting with the A350 on quality, shop floor organisation, entry into service support,” Fontaine said.

Fontaine said Airbus wanted to help break down silos by having all the data currently on different IT systems stored on one common data link.

“When you go down to the factories, and the guys tell you, ‘I am planning my Rate 60 ramp up on an Excel sheet’, it is not true,” Fontaine said.

“In some stations you have six systems which don’t talk to each other.

“Our ambition is to be ready in 2018 to have this data link fully operational across platforms, across programs and to be able to look at the data and to look at it from different perspectives. ”

Looking for the next big thing

Airbus is also helping support startups develop their latest ideas through its BizLab program that have been established in Toulouse and Hamburg, offering technical, marketing, finance and human resources expertise, as well as access to airlines and partners in the Airbus supply chain.

The company has also launched its fifth Fly Your Ideas competition, where university students can submit new ideas and concepts for improving air travel.

It does not take long for an entry to quickly go beyond the concept stage to real life, such as the inflight trolley idea from five designers at the University of Sao Paulo to more quickly separate waste items such as plastic, paper and leftover food, which was runner-up in the most recent competition. In December 2015, the trolley was part of Airbus’s six-month BizLab acceleration program, resulting in a first prototype in April and a second prototype that will be tested on an easyJet aircraft in the second half of 2016.

More details on this year’s competition, which is looking at five industry challenges – business models, flight operations, passenger experience, design engineering and manufacturing – can be found at www.airbus-fyi.com.

That is our goal . . . printing complete aircraft instead of painting them.