Operations research applied to aerospace manufacturing and assembly: a survey

This paper presents an overview of operations research approaches applied to aerospace manufacturing and assembly. A survey was carried out in the main literature databases and 70 related works were found, revealing a notable growth in the number of papers in the 2010s. For the purposes of this study, aerospace industrial operations were classified into three main stages, namely manufacturing, structural and final assembly, and the papers, methods and results of each stage are presented and analysed, synthesising the main applications and techniques used. Finally, a conceptual diagram of this review is presented and a synthesis of opportunities is provided for future research in this industry.