A Systems Engineering Framework that Integrates Aircraft Final Assembly Design Activities

A modern large-scaled aircraft consists of numerous structural and system components. Many of those components are installed and tested in the final assembly stage. To design the aircraft final assembly processes, engineers are required to have a comprehensive understanding of the interdependences and interactions between all the aircraft components, and the following influence to manufacturing operations. This work is difficult and challenging due to final assembly design activities lie in both product design and operations management fields. Final assembly processes link to product and operations constraints, thus a process-oriented method is required. Aircraft as a typical system of systems, systems engineering framework, for instance the V model, is used to understand the product complicities and guide the product design activities. However, there is no such a framework for final assembly line (FAL) process. This research investigates the activities of aircraft integrations at final assembly stage, then introduces a framework following Systems Engineering (SE) principles for integrating FAL design activities.