Boeing South Carolina builds the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, the world's first composite-skinned wide-body jet. This new manufacturing facility is evolving to meet the demands of building this complex aircraft. One of the challenges faced by this site is providing the manufacturing workforce with the best tools for the job in an efficient manner. Two different research streams investigate this high-...

Introduction This report from the Center for Competitive Analysis (CCA) of the University of Missouri is intended to provide background information about the Motor Vehicle Parts and Accessories Manufacturing (MVPA) industry. This introductory section will report some basic information about the industry. The MVPA industry is classified under SIC code 3714. Firms in this industry are often split...

Both service and manufacturing industries depend on the availability of expensive equipment to deliver their products. Examples of such equipment include aircraft, rolling stock and manufacturing equipment. When this equipment is not working, the primary processes of their owners come to an immediate stop. To reduce the downtime of equipment, companies stock critical components such that the eq...

This paper proposes novel Fuel Cell Auxiliary Power Unit (FCAPU) for J150+ aircraft application. The primary version of APU in J150+ aircraft is a gas turbine Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) which is based on gas turbine jet engine but in the suggested FCAPU, the generated electrical power is achieved from chemical energy with higher efficiency. The Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) technology is used to...

A methodology to estimate the cost implications of design decisions by integrating cost as a design parameter at an early design stage is presented. The model is developed on a hierarchical basis, the manufacturing cost of aircraft fuselage panels being analysed in this paper. The manufacturing cost modelling is original and relies on a genetic-causal method where the drivers of each element of...

We divide potential NII (National Information Infrastructure) services into The latter denotes the broad suite of tools we expect to be ooered on the Web in a general environment we term WebWindows. We review current and future World Wide Web technologies, which could underlie these services. In particular, we suggest an integration framework WebWork for High Performance (parallel and distribut...

Automated solutions for manufacturing composite products based on prepreg often imply Automatic Fiber Placement or Automatic Tape Laying. These systems are generally associated with huge investments. For certain manufacturing applications it is interesting to investigate alternatives to find simpler and less costly automation. One example of an automated system could be the use of a standard in...

Reconfigurability means low cost and short time to change machine configuration to meet application demands. Typical machining and positioning systems use hard actuators, like screws and pistons, and are built with slideways and hard frames. These components provide good stiffness, are well-proven, and can be packaged into modules to build reconfigurable machines. They are also relatively expen...