Spirit grows automation as it prepares for 737 rate increase

In a matter of months, Spirit AeroSystems will be manufacturing parts of the Boeing 737 at the highest rate since the company was founded 11 years ago.

By early 2017, Wichita’s largest employer will be building them at a rate of 47 a month, up from the 42 a month it builds today — and double the rate of 21 a month when the company was formed in 2005.

The rate increase is due largely to Boeing’s swollen order book for its best-selling narrow-body jetliner, of which Spirit manufactures the entire fuselage, pylons and parts of its wings.

Boeing’s unfilled orders for the 737 — including its current Next Generation and new Max variants — stand at 4,385. At 47 airplanes a month, that figures to nearly eight years of building 737s.

To prepare for the rate increase, Spirit has been beefing up its facilities and equipment on South Oliver, part of a $100 million investment by the company for its work not only on the 737, but on all Boeing aircraft it builds major parts for: 747, 767, 777 and the 787.

Those improvements have touched Plant 2, a roughly 2.5 million-square-foot factory dating to World War II, where Spirit assembles the 737 fuselage, as well as expansion of its propulsion manufacturing facility and the addition of more rail spurs. The company uses those spurs to ship assembled 737 fuselages and other parts by train to Boeing in Washington state.

And part of that effort has included the addition of automated machines — robots — to compensate not only for higher rates on the 737, but also the 787, the production rate of which also ticked up this year from 10 a month to 12.

“We continually look at technology that will take advantage of some of the older assets we have,” said Vic McMullen, Spirit vice president and general manager of operations, during a tour with reporters of Spirit’s Plant 2. “We continually look for different technologies that will enhance the build process than we have today and reduce costs.”

Robots at work

One of the most obvious examples of increasing automation can be found in Plant 2, where an increased number of automated machines can be found drilling and fastening aluminum panels to sections of the airframe of the 737.

Spirit has been upgrading its automation capabilities for that work for the past several years, officials said, completing technology upgrades on about six machines. A similar effort is currently underway on six other machines, they said.

At a separate facility on its South Oliver campus for the manufacture of 737 thrust reversers, Spirit has added new Kuka robots, which perforate the inner walls of 737 engine nacelles. Those machines are in addition to two older robots that perform the same task, which company officials named Dorothy and Toto.

The Kuka robots — which are more efficient and take up less floor space than the older robots — will be used in addition to Dorothy and Toto to meet the higher rates.

Automation is also prevalent in the recently expanded building where Spirit manufactures the composite forward fuselage of the 787 Dreamliner. Included in that building — which Spirit has expanded by 94,000 square feet — is a roughly four-story-high Electroimpact automated fiber placement machine that creates the wide-body airplane’s cockpit and forward cabin section by meticulously laying strips of carbon fiber on tooling in the shape of the Dreamliner fuselage section.

Spirit officials said the company has added more of those machines in the past few years to meet higher production rates on the 787.

Terry George, Spirit vice president of 787, said it takes about 3 1/2 days for the robot “to put all the material down on a (787) section 41,” followed by about half a day in an autoclave, which is a pressure chamber that cures the composite material into a solid structure.

Robots have their place

Shawn Campbell, Spirit’s vice president of 737, said a lot of the newer automation the company has put in place has been done with the intent of looking beyond the company’s near-term 737 rate increases.

“We’re constantly looking ahead,” Campbell said during the tour. “We work very closely with Boeing on what’s coming up, what rates they are studying. … So a lot of the automation you saw wasn’t just for one rate increase.”

While the addition of more robots will help Spirit achieve the rates set by Boeing, its largest customer, the company hasn’t found it to be as helpful in all areas of 737 production, especially the final stage of integration, which is putting together sections of the 737 into a single fuselage.

While it may seem like Spirit has “all this great automation, everywhere,” integration is one area where McMullen said automation has yet to prove itself.

But some of Spirit’s 10,800 Wichita employees have.

“In five hours, six hours, or less a day, these mechanics can completely join the airplane, drill it, pull it back apart, seal it, deburr it (and) put it back together,” McMullen said. “We’ve tried different technologies and it takes longer to set up that technology than it does this awesome team we have that can do it that quick.

“The 737 is done in 31 production days,” he said. “So if you think about introducing more automation in a flow that tight, and you look at all the work in process we have, it would slow us down dramatically to try and do it differently.

“The way we’ve designed the production flow to meet the rate demand … we think we’ve got the best solution.”

This story was originally published July 13, 2016 at 6:34 PM with the headline "Spirit grows automation as it prepares for 737 rate increase."