An Anecdote - Order of Magnitude Cost and Time Reduction in Delivering an Aircraft Manufacturing Solution

From purchase order to production womb-to-tomb in 5 months to the day, Bombardier's Fuselage Assembly line was upgraded and made into a fuselage automated assembly pulse line. This was accomplished with a factory move of the assembly line while maintaining production of this legacy line without missing one aircraft. Early in 2012, a bold decision was made to change the plan from a manual process to an automated process and implemented on schedule. This was applying automation to a legacy aircraft assembly line. It worked. Both technology and recurring cost savings will be addressed in this paper.