An Ontology-based Engineering methodology applied to aerospace Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems design

Abstract

Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMS) have gained attention in the aerospace industry in the past years, as post-pandemic context shows drastic production capacity changes and new environmental regulations to which it must adapt quicker than before to maintain competitiveness. Nevertheless, current RMS design methods have not thoroughly considered this industry specificities, nor industrial resources requirements in the current concurrent design practice. These limitations have been identified in several recent research works. Ontology-based Engineering (OBE) systems can stand overly complex collaborative design processes involving multidisciplinary stakeholders and various digital tools, integrating different levels of decision. Models for Manufacturing (MfM) is an OBE methodology aiming to enable industrial design and decision-making in manufacturing by preserving the company knowledge in ontology models, usable as knowledge base to generate and integrate the aircraft and manufacturing systems design. This paper presents an MfM application for RMS design in aerospace, introducing innovative design concepts that allow implementing RMS in a collaborative engineering process of an aerospace product. An implementation is shown designing the RMS of a model aircraft family to illustrate the concepts introduced and considerations are given to transfer this knowledge base into an OBE system to support complex real-life applications.

KEYWORDS:

• Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems (RMS)
• Models for Manufacturing (MfM)
• Ontology-based Engineering (OBE)
• knowledge management
• aerospace industry

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Universidad de Sevilla, Airbus, and M&M Group colleagues for their support and contribution during the development of this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article and its supplementary materials.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rebeca Arista

Rebeca Arist a is a Ph.D. student at the Dpt. Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, University of Seville, and an Airbus specialist in Industrial Modelling & Simulations. She conducts up to this day international and European R&T projects on Industry 4.0 enabler technologies (Complex Assembly Simulations, Robotics, AR/VR, Planning-Scheduling, and Ontologies), testing and validating their maturity to secure the technology transition to operations. She has several publications in international journals and conferences in PLM and intelligent manufacturing domain. She is a Governance Board member of the Industrial Ontologies Foundry (IOF) and member of international scientific and professional organisations like OMG and INCOSE. Her current research interests involve ontology-based engineering systems and applied ontologies for multi-domain simulations.

Fernando Mas

Fernando MAS (1959) obtained his Engineering degree (Industrial Engineer) at the University of Sevilla and his Ph.D. in Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Madrid. He is currently Chief Technical Officer (CTO) at M&M Group, in charge of the Science, Technology and R&D activities. Previously he was CTO at COMLUX America LCC in Indianapolis, IN – U.S.A., Senior Advisor at Airbus in Silicon Valley, CA – U.S.A. and Senior Expert in Technology and R&D at Airbus Defense & Space in Europe. He is Professor and Research Fellow at the University of Sevilla. His research topics are Ontology-based Engineering (OBE), Models for Manufacturing (MfM), Ontologies, PLM, Virtual Engineering & Manufacturing, and Digital Factory. He owns patents in the EU and the U.S.A., more than 75 papers published in refereed international journals and conferences and is member of several international scientific and professional organisations. He also acts as evaluation expert for Spanish and European bodies.

Domingo Morales-Palma

Domingo Morales-Palma was born and educated in Spain. He joined the Dpt. Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Seville in 2005 and completed his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at the same university in 2011. Currently, he is Associate Professor. Dr Morales-Palma has conducted research into sheet metal forming processes, specially focusing on stretch-bending and incremental sheet forming, and has published more than 40 papers in international journals and conferences. His current research interests also involve ontology-based design and methodologies applied to manufacturing.

Carpoforo Vallellano

Carpoforo Vallellano received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Seville (US), Spain, in 1999. He is currently full professor of manufacturing processes and Head of the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering in the US. His research interests include manufacturing engineering, metal forming, and material fracture, conducting R&D projects on conventional and incremental sheet metal forming, additive manufacturing, virtual manufacturing, and jigless assembly. He is co-author of more than 100 papers in international journals and conferences, and member of the European Structural Integrity Society (ESIS), the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), the Spanish Group of Fracture (GEF), and the Spanish Manufacturing Engineering Society (SIF).