Method and software application to assist in the conceptual design of aircraft final assembly lines

The decision-making process during the conceptual design of aircraft final assembly lines requires of software applications to assist industrialization engineers. This work proposes a method, a supporting model and ad-hoc software development to address that issue. The proposed method divides the problem of the assembly process definition into four parts: logistic plan definition, assembly line definition, layout design and evaluation of complete solutions. The proposed approach is implemented in a prototype software application that is integrated within a commercial software system widely used in the aerospace sector. Feasible design solutions, which are created by the user interactively, are evaluated and ranked with a Fuzzy Logic based multi criteria utility. A case study shows the feasibility of the proposed approach.