As Airbus reintegrates aerostructures, complex part and seat manufacturer Stelia Aerospace into two newly formed subsidiaries over the next year, examining Stelia’s ten-year “Industry of the Future” programme is an enlightening deep-dive into modern — and forthcoming — manufacturing methodologies, processes and strategies.
Stelia’s work comes in a unique position, following the decision two months ago to reintegrate it over the next year into newly formed Airbus subsidiaries and with the substantial support given to French aviation industry by that country’s government.
Even more than before, that makes it a case study to watch for a variety of reasons, not least that it is both part of — and includes initiatives beyond — Industry 4.0.
As former senior vice president and head of industry Stéphane Campion (recently appointed as head of Airbus’ massive Saint Nazaire facility) put it when presenting the programme this spring, “our positioning as a design-and-build aerostructure Tier 1, ranking among the first three worldwide leaders, allows us to embrace a large spectrum of technologies and activities, from the manufacturing of composite and metallic elementary parts — which are absolutely key in order to master work packages design — to the assembly of sections, and of course system integration.”
Stelia has created, Campion explained, a “roadmap for the next years in order to get ready for future challenges”, which includes a strong focus on digitalisation and the supply chain.
The company has drawn the conclusion that “we need to strengthen the competitiveness of the group, together with our supply chain,” said Campion. “As a Tier 1 leader in France, by far the first customer for detailed aerostructure parts, at least in France, we drive a large part of the supply chain, which we systematically associate [integrate] in our work.”
This work builds on the 2017 inauguration of Stelia’s “factory of the future” in Méaulte, near Amiens to the north of Paris.
“Since this period,” Campion outlined, “we have completed our production tools in order to reinforce the safety for our collaborators on our products, the quality for our customers, and the competitiveness for today and tomorrow.”
The vision for 2030 is to achieve environmentally friendly products, to cut production lead times for high added value detail parts, achieve a high rate of modular assembly — and a low rate of multi-product assembly — and to develop a connected supply chain.
To get there, Stelia classifies its work on the industry of the future into seven strands:
- methodology
- assembly
- equipped modules
- elementary parts
- environment friendly process
- supply chain
- digitalisation
It further breaks down these strands into three time periods: 2021-2023, 2023-2025, and 2025-2030.
Its methodology work focusses on change management and Design for X (DFX) as near-term goals, with updates to industrial architecture, methods and tools coming as the company approaches 2023.
On assembly, work is already started on managing manufacturing parameters, including in composites, as well as jigless assembly — which, later in the timeline, is expected to achieve robotised and jigless assembly on moving lines, which will be accompanied by versatile assembly lines.
Equipped modules, in essence pre-equipping various parts of the aerostructure, dovetails with the wider modularity work that is a firm trend within commercial aviation manufacturing. Stelia is already taking the first steps in system integration on its existing product, as well as minimising the required toolings and performing function integration work within the sub-assemblies. Moving towards 2030, the goal is to bake in the principle of pre-equipment when designing the architecture of future products.
On the elementary parts side, Stelia plans three workstreams starting now and continuing throughout the programme. To start, automating non-value-added tasks is being combined with the robotisation of some more complex tasks. To add to this, manufacturing lines are being reworked to be more flexible, robust and versatile, while new manufacturing technologies are integrated at the same time.
To reduce the company’s environmental footprint, Stelia is bio-sourcing consumables and packaging in the short term, while moving to more environmentally friendly thermal and surface treatments from 2023.
With aviation’s supply chain seeing unprecedented challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic, four workstreams are already underway: optimising demand signals, anticipating missing parts, optimising the logistics flow, and revisiting the make/buy lines in its cockpit supply contract [PDF, French].
To tie it all together, Stelia is moving forward with its greatest number of initiatives in the digitalisation arena. The company is implementing an industry 4.0 digital platform approach, adding connectivity to its industrial means, concentrating on the operator ecosystem, using dynamic operation planning, and adopting digital twinning.
With emerging transformation funding arriving as part of the national France relance [“French relaunch”, PDF, French] effort, Stelia is investing over €110 million in this Industry of the Future plan, which Campion expects to “systematically combine innovation and agility in order to introduce new ways of working as quickly as possible in our industrial standards.”
Author: John Walton
Published: 1st July 2021
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