Barriers to Automation of Aircraft Production 

Provided by Wilson N. Felder 

Three cost elements contribute almost 100% of the cost of airline operations: fuel, 

capital, and personnel1. The capital cost is almost entirely attributable to aircraft (most of 

which are, of course, leased, but the high lease cost is reflective of the high intrinsic cost 

of the asset), and a visit to any typical aircraft manufacturing facility instantly reveals 

why: an aircraft plant doesn’t even remind you of an auto plant ca. 1950: it reminds you 

of a medieval craft workshop. Aircraft assembly is artisanal work. Much progress has 

been made in recent years, with the advent of the moving assembly line, introduced by 

Boeing initially on its B737 final assembly plant2, and with highly automated processes 

being applied by companies such as Spirit Aerosystems (a Boeing spinoff) on major 

subassemblies for the B737 and B787 and various Airbus products3

. By and large, 

however, final assembly, sub assembly and piece part manufacturing in the aircraft 

industry remains a high-touch operation. The contrast is equally striking between the 

manufacture of consumer electronics and avionics components. In Olathe, KS, within 

about 2 miles of each other, a Garmin consumer GPS plant operates with about 6 

employees on the shop floor, turning out a higher number of units per day than the 

Honeywell Bendix King plant just down the road with a staff of hundreds of line workers 

producing General Aviation avionics4. Why? 

There are a number of reasons for the picture painted above, but from a manufacturing 

technology point of view, there appear to be a small number of salient factors: 

1) Conservatism. The aircraft industry is possibly the most conservative industrial 

community extant (maybe with the exception of nuclear power...) It is rare, but not 

unheard of, to hear of a school bus in rural Pick-your-state going off the road and 

tragically killing a couple of dozen middle schoolers on a field trip. An accident 

involving two dozen passengers on a commercial aircraft makes banner headlines 

nationwide and sparks an NTSB investigation. Consequently, there hasn’t been one 

of those in years. As a result of this conservative viewpoint, designers tend to stick to 

well known designs for the aircraft, their components, and the systems and processes 

used to produce them; 

2) Government regulation. Aircraft and their systems are tightly regulated and certified 

by the FAA. To change even one component aboard a new aircraft is an expensive 

and time consuming process. The Government employees charged with this process 

put their names and reputations personally on the line every time they certify a new 

product, variant, use, or modification. Naturally, they are not big fans of change. 

3) Design for manufacturing. Because of the above two factors, designs for new 

airplanes tend to be extensions or modifications of old designs, adapted for a new 

appplication. Consequently, they are not designed with a view to automation of the 

production process5

. If given a choice between making the essential change to 

improve the performance of the ultimate product, or incorporating process oriented 

elements, the choice will always be made in favor of the former. “Both” is not an 

option here because of the negative impact on the certification result. 
4) Issues of scale. Unlike consumer electronics, appliances, or automobiles, aircraft, 

particularly large commercial and business aircraft, span a far larger set of scales. 

Assembly of a commercial airliner requires fine scale accuracy on an assembly 

hundreds of feet in length6

. This reality puts extreme stress on the performance of 

automated tools (fit of components has therefore traditionally been the work of highly 

skilled artisans) In recent years progress has been made on this front, by relaxing 

overall positioning demands while maintaining precision locally. 

5) Low production rate of final product. A highly ambitious production schedule for a 

aicraft plant or major sub-assembly plant, is one item per day. This is compared to 

hundreds at a typical auto plant, or thousands at a typical consumer products plant7. 

The capital cost of production machinery is therefore amortized over a much smaller 

production run, which increases the cost sensitivity. Hand work remains cheaper. 

6) Low production rate of supply chain8. A corollary exists for the supply chain. Since 

the demand is low for parts industry wide, suppliers are blocked from implementing 

automation for piece parts, and are caught in the same bind as the final assemblers. 

The questions for the technology community are these: 

1) What would it take to develop a flexible aircraft production environment at the major 

sub-assembly and final assembly stages with the same level of automation now seen 

in auto manufacturing? 

2) Which extremely efficient manufacturing approaches are most likely to help with this 

goal? 

3) Is this fundamentally a problem of technology (we don’t know how) or is it 

fundamentally a problem of money (we know how but can’t afford to)? 

4) What should the role of the U.S. Government be in this process? 

Aviation is the quintessential supporting transportation mechanism for the information 

revolution. The aviation community’s inability to grapple with the issues of affordability 

it faces has arguably resulted in a brake (perhaps even a significant brake) on U.S. 

economic growth. Others (the Canadian National Research Council and the EU, for 

example) are actively tackling this problem9

. Continued viability of aviation as a 

contributor to national well being demands that we respond. 

A useful approach to addressing this problem would perhaps be the establishment of a 

National Institute for Aircraft Production Technology formed as a public-private 

partnership among major aircraft buyers, parts manufacturers, academia, and Federal 

Labs. The first goal of such an entity might be to demonstrate the fully automated 

assembly of a fully FAA Certified small General Aviation aircraft capable of operation as 

an unmanned aerial system (UAS). Such a project would address both the automated 

aircraft production challenge, and the parallel problem of UAS certification. 

1 References provided with final version of this paper. 
References: 

1. 2009 data can be found at http://www.airlinefinancials.com 

2. Cort, Adam, (2008), One Lean, Mean Airplane, Assembly Magazine (online), 21 

August 2008, p.1. 

3. Weber, Austin, (2009), High-flying Robots, Assembly Magazine (online), 29 April 

2009, p.2. 

4. My personal observation as a result of visits made during the 2003-2006 period. 

5. Sholl, Phil, (2006), Automating the assembly of aircraft, Editorial feature, Aircraft 

Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 78 Iss: 2, p.142. 

6. Weber, op cit., p.2. 

7. Weber, op cit. p.6. 

8. Ibid. 

9. E.g.: Bres, Antoine, Bruno Monsarrat, Laurent Dubourg, Lionel Birglen, Claude 

Perron, Mohamad Jahazi, and Luc Baron, (2010), Simulation of Robotic Friction Stir 

Welding of Aerospace Components, International Journal of Industrial Robots, pp. 36-50, 

Vol. 37, No. 1, January 2010