Continuous improvement of occupational safety performance in aerospace production systems through collaborative automation

Abstract

Employee health and safety are a top priority in aerospace manufacturing. As companies increase their production systems capacity in preparation for upcoming rate targets, new opportunities for continuous improvement start becoming evident and time critical. A strong collaboration of Health and Safety, Quality, Manufacturing and Research and Technology groups is paramount to ensure that adequate technologies are developed and deployed in the right stages of the manufacturing system in a way that is compliant with both technology readiness and the business needs. The integration of collaborative automation on ergo-motivated continuous improvement projects pose two major challenges in this aerospace manufacturing process. Firstly, the availability of resources to measure the current state, i.e. the identification and prioritization of the sub-steps and specific tasks in the process that require technological intervention. Secondly, the potential incompatibility of production systems, continuous improvement and technology development road maps that limit the speed at which new technologies flow to the shop floor. By leveraging the existence of historical safety performance and labor-tracking data, the proposed methodology offers an immediate approximation of occupational risk of the current state. This allows a "first gate" deliverable for any given continuous improvement project for the Occupational Health and Safety group with minimal use of resources, a framework for the R&D organizations to create and prioritize ergonomically-driven projects and ultimately complement business cases to propel technologies towards final deployment. The methodology results in a statistical risk profile that highlights the manual sub-steps of a product line that show better candidacy for collaborative automation. Continuous improvement and conventional Lean/Six Sigma tools where furthermore applied to demonstrate process capability and move a collaborative robot through the production system implementation roadmap in record timing.