Original Date: 05/08/1995
Revision Date: 01/18/2007

The objective of the Integrated Assembly Management Process (IAMP) at McDonnell Douglas Aerospace (MDA)- St. Louis is to lower the total cost of the assembly process. The IAMP consists of assembly knowledge acquisition, multiprocess integration re-engineering, constraint-based scheduling, and optimum resource deployment.

The assembly knowledge acquisition process represents a key reason behind the IAMP’ success. This process is documented through precedence diagrams to identify assembly sequence requirements. Other constraint information is also documented such as aircraft zone access needed, tooling requirements, and assembly instruction data sets. This data allows the IAMP to synchronize application of resources to the assembly process and ensure work zones are available when work is scheduled. In one case, the number of mechanics required to support an assembly process was reduced from 10 to 5, based on zone access limitations.

The IAMP was used in a major aircraft program in late 1993. The first constraint-based production schedules were created in early 1994 and applied to the build process in mid-1994. As a result of the improved scheduling of the IAMP, aircraft assembly time was cut in half (from 32 to 14 days), 5000 square feet of high bay floor space was released for other uses, and 0.8 aircraft were removed from the production flow, saving $7.9M in work-in-process and reducing carrying costs by $1.6M.

For more information see the Point of Contact for this survey.