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November 17, 2019 04:34 am

Boeing Fires Its Fuselage-Assembling Robots, Goes Back To Using Humans

schwit1 quotes the Seattle Times:After enduring a manufacturing mess that spanned six years and cost millions of dollars as it implemented a large-scale robotic system for automated assembly of the 777 fuselage, Boeing has abandoned the robots and will go back to relying more on its human machinists... The technology was implemented gradually from 2015 inside a new building on the Everett site. But right from the start, the robots proved painful to set up and error-prone, producing damaged fuselages and others that were incompletely assembled and had to be finished by hand. "The Fuselage Automated Upright Build process is a horrible failure," one mechanic told The Seattle Times in 2016. Another called the system "a nightmare" that was snarling 777 production. Yet Boeing insisted then that these were teething pains that would pass...The automation has never delivered its promise of reduced hand labor and Boeing has had to maintain a substantial workforce of mechanics to finish the work of the robots. Because of the errors in the automation, that often took longer than if they had done it all by hand from the start... It's taken six years to finally throw in the towel. Yet the article also notes that Boeing will continue to use its highly-automated autonomous robotic systems on other parts of their 777 assembly process.

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