Digital factory approach for flexible and efficient manufacturing systems in the aerospace industry

This paper is focused on the employment of Digital Factory methodologies with the aim of improving the flexibility and the efficiency of a real manufacturing cell dedicated to the precision manufacturing of mechanical components for the aerospace industry. An automation upgrade of the cell is proposed, involving the introduction of an industrial robot for part handling, loading and unloading, and a new automatic surface inspection system (ASIS) for the final part inspection. The research activities are carried out within one of the projects of the Italian National Technology Cluster on Intelligent Factory. In this framework, the digital validation of the real manufacturing system is performed through Discrete Event Simulation to analyze the performance of the manufacturing system in terms of productivity and utilization of resources under different alternative scenarios, avoiding the risks associated with physical experimentation on the real system.