Story ID: 800
Boeing Confronts Challenges of 777 Automation Push
By: Gregory Polek
Caption: Company says delays in transition to FAUB won’t threaten 777X EIS schedule, however.
Word Count: 806
While Boeing continues to express confidence in its ability to smoothly manage the transition between the current generation 777 airliner and the new 777X, one of the keys to its success hangs on preparation for a new automation process. That has proved every bit the challenge some had anticipated. In fact, while speaking with a group of reporters just before the show in the 777 factory in Everett, Washington, BCA (Boeing Commercial Aircraft) v-p of 777 and 777X operations Jason Clark characterized as the learning process associated with the move to a fuselage automated upright build, or FAUB, as “really hard.”

“There’s nothing easy about bringing on a pathfinder technology,” he said. “And if it was, well, gee whiz, we probably would have done it 20 or 30 years ago.”

Used for the first time last fall, the build process serves as something of a centerpiece for Boeing’s continuing evolution toward car-industry style automation. For example, it will allow the company to remove all of the body-structures tools in favor of a process using cradles and automated guided vehicles that “pulse” throughout the production system. At the same time, the company plans to remove all the tooling associated with the wing-to-body join, also in favor of a cradle-based production system.

Under the traditional process, employees build fuselage sections in an upside-down configuration. They drill and fasten the panels together using power tools, a repetitive and tiring job that places a lot of stress on their shoulders and hands. Once complete, a crane places the section onto a large turning fixture that rotates it in an upright position. The turned section then gets moved via crane to its next location for work to continue through completion.

Using automated guided robots designed by Kuka Robotics, FAUB drills and fills some 60,000 fasteners that attach the panels comprising the 777’s forward and aft body sections. The new process uses automated guided vehicles (AGVs) to move the components of FAUB into position, including work stands, fuselages and the robotic arms that drill and insert fasteners. The robots, positioned inside and outside the fuselage, not only drill the holes, but also act as a bucking bar and perform dynamic riveting.

Boeing has so far sent 15 airplane fuselages through the new system, said Clark. However, it had hoped to fully move to the new process by the end of the summer. It now has given itself another year to reach the milestone. Still, the company insists the delay will not block the so-called “critical path” to 777X EIS (entry into service) in 2020.

Clark explained that the challenges lie not with the automation itself, but rather in what he described as “our own condition of assembly” and “how we prep.”

“The very first position is where we bring the panels in from the heavy industries over in Japan or Spirit [Aerosystems] and we basically tack them together,” he explained. “Well, this airplane was designed in an era when that’s not what you did. We brought them into large tool jigs and put them back into the shape of the tool.

“We’ve changed the tooling philosophy so what we’re going through is some of those learnings, working with our suppliers, working with our own internal engineering to really modify how it goes together. When it goes together well, then it moves into the second position, where the automation comes on…It takes a while to get it all effective, you’ve got to dial it in over time. Right now we’re in that dialing phase.”  

The effort involves retraining mechanics and changing some installation plans, added Clark. “It’s hard on our guys,” he explained, “that first time around, and we’re only 15 barrels in. But with every barrel, we’ve gotten better.”  

In another key effort to “de-risk” transition from the 777 to 777X, low-rate initial production of the first twenty-three 777-9s will happen where the company had placed the now decommissioned surge line for the 787 in the Everett factory, what Boeing calls the 40-24 bay. That means Boeing will build the fuselages—forward, middle and aft bodies—with FAUB in the main flow of the existing 777 line and move them onto the low-rate line until about 2020. “We do that because it is a major de-risking element,” said Clark. “When we have to inject a new derivative into the main line, it really struggles as it gets into the final assembly area because the flows are so extensive within that production system. So it really bogs down the main production system for final assembly. [Instead], you take all that risk and put it over on the other line and you can learn it at the pace [production] needs to be at.”