Grant: Applied Research and Development Grants - Level 1

Airbus Helicopters Canada, operating in Fort Erie, Ontario since 1984, approached the Walker Advanced ManufacturingInnovation Centre at Niagara College to collaborate on an applied research project focused on productivity. The company,responsible for manufacturing, marketing, selling, assembling, supporting and providing training solutions Airbus rotary-wingaircrafts in Canada, is seeking guidance and partnership to improve the productivity of a trimming and drilling workstation.The composite and metallic manufacturing business line identified this workstation as primary bottleneck within themanufacturing process and as an area that needed to reduce its scrap rate. From the composite materials manufacturingprocess, this station follows the curing process (this is where composite parts sit in molds and bake in an autoclave to takerigid form) and precedes the painting and final assembly stations. Parts that cycle through this station include helicopterengine cowlings, shrouding, boarding steps, and belly panels.The major challenge of the station is its dependency on antiquated methods of manufacturing such as hand-drivenequipment and its need for a very high degree of accuracy. When leaving this station to move to the next, the parts need tomeet quality control standards with tight tolerances, otherwise, they face rejection. This puts a lot of pressure on theoperators of the station. If the trimming operator slips when routing the part, or trims a part at the wrong angle, or uses anyamount of force but the right force when trimming or drilling, the final part will be damaged. This results in scrapping orreworking the part, usually the former. When a part is damaged, it goes into a long and costly set of procedures that includea non-conformity report, repair scheme, and stress analysis. From this point the cost to repair versus the cost to create anew piece is considered. In the event that a damaged piece becomes scrap it is known in the industry as beyondeconomical repair (BER). This is all to say that errors in the trimming and drilling workstation are very costly for the companyand hampering its ability to win bids against competing Airbus plants and external suppliers. In addition to scrap relatedissues, the rate of production could be increased to cut down on the overall cost per part manufactured.Overall, the goal of the project is to create an improved composite materials trimming and routing station by reducingscrappage by 15% and improving its overall rate of production by 15%. These improvements will be a result of an appliedresearch project that closely investigates each set of processes, detects areas to eliminate wasted time, makesrecommendations for new manufacturing techniques, and standardizes processes with internal stakeholders.