Industrial Resources in the design of Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems for aerospace: A systematic literature review

Abstract

New aerospace product developments need to be done following economic and environmental drivers like costs reduction, secure a short time-to-market, reduce total carbon footprint, among others. Aerospace manufacturing systems must quickly adapt to new products or driver changes, reusing existing industrial resources with enough flexibility to be adjusted or reconfigured in the desired scenarios. As a result, the industrial resource reconfigurability requires to be considered from the conceptual design phase of both, product and industrial resources development, in a collaborative engineering process, following Reconfigurable Manufacturing System (RMS) principles. This paper aims to support the aerospace RMS design at conceptual phase. To this end, a systematic literature review is performed focusing on the following research questions: (a) which characteristics of aerospace industrial resources need to be considered at conceptual design phase?; (b) how the industrial resources design is interlinked with the product and processes design in current RMS design methods?; (c) how to consider aerospace products non-negligible constraints during RMS design?; (d) what is the current application of RMS in the aerospace industry?. Compared to other reviews focusing on specific aspects of the RMS design and management, this study is focused on the industrial resource role in the RMS design at the conceptual phase and highlights the application or applicability of RMS in the aerospace industry. The goal is to provide the research community with an overview of the research trend on the field, and recommendations to stimulate researchers and practitioners in developing studies in this field.