Application Of Project Management In Digital Manufacturing Of Aviation Products

Aeronautical product manufacturers, different from manufacturers of other products, feature in high technology as well as funding intensiveness. The application of high technology and advanced equipment does not necessarily mean rise in aeronautical product prices. As a matter of fact, the prices are gradually getting lower. Facing these challenges, the way out is to improve manufacturing technical levels, and, more importantly, to introduce advanced enterprise management methods so as to promote management standard and improve manufacturing business system.As a kind of effective management approach, the project management method emphasizes engineering-based simplified implementation. It does not require large-scale hardware investment. Thus the implementation of project management has low risk in investment. At present, project management has become an effective management approach to the progressing of modernized aeronautical product manufacturers.Meanwhile, the aeronautical product manufacturing technologies are changing with each passing day, pushing the development of manufacturing enterprises by great leaps forward. The enterprises, in order to avail the developing opportunities resulted from technical revolutions, have to make necessary innovative changes to the whole product production / manufacturing process and operational management, as well as to actively develop new program management tools for promotion of enterprise management capabilities.Traditional aeronautical product manufacturing systems typically use analog transfer methods. Real items such as lofting, templates and mock-ups are standard references in traditional aeronautical product manufacturing systems. Since the storage of these standard references are sensitive to environment such as temperature and humidity, plus the dependence on the skill levels of operators in the process of analog transfer, the analog transfer based aeronautical product manufacturing system has defects of low accuracy and low efficiency, etc.In recent years, supported by relevant national sci-tech programs, exploration and research efforts in advanced aeronautical product manufacturing field are going deeper. Currently, information-based hardware/software infrastructures of certain scale have been made available; digital technology has been widely used in product design, manufacturing, management, and testing processes, and on this basis, there have been primary achievements in the application of integrative and collaborative technologies; relative enterprises have started the establishment of digital integration platforms; and integration technologies and advanced manufacturing modes, such as multi-site collaboration, virtual manufacturing, and concurrent engineering, have been put into use. In digital manufacturing environment, it has practical meaningful to apply project management to aeronautical product manufacturing systems for reduction of aeronautical product manufacturing costs, speeding up of product manufacturing rates, and improvement of product qualities.This thesis works on the problems to requiring immediate solutions while applying project management method to the digital manufacturing process of China's aeronautical products. It analyzes the current management state in China's aeronautical product manufacturing enterprises, gives an primary review on the application of project management method in manufacturing of large aeronautical products, and focuses on the management means and methods innovation, application effects and the economic & social benefits.The highlights of the thesis are the analysis on application of project management method in the manufacturing and engineering of aeronautical products in digitalized conditions, the study on the establishment of aeronautical product manufacturing management system from a project management perspective, and the investigation on application of program management tools in aeronautical enterprises by the use of manufacturing information network. In addition, the thesis also studies and analyzes the application of project management tools in the development of airliners. This thesis focuses on the application of project management method in the scientific research and production in first-level aeronautical enterprises. It is a regret that the thesis does not include a comparative analysis between similar domestic and foreign enterprises. However, the thesis mainly reflects the practical application facts in enterprises. Hope this thesis will make some contribution to the innovation and promotion of project management in domestic aeronautical manufacturing industry.