JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #138 - January/February 2021 - 25

Improving productivity and efficiency with automated kitting system

Airborne Automated Kitting solution

the processes that we can help automate
digitize and create systems that can help
our customers to become more efficient
without interfering too much in their
facilities or infrastructure. That's what
we have been doing for kitting, which is
our biggest offer to date, and we believe
that there is a lot to be gained, not only
on the reduction of manual labour, but
also efficiency in terms of less waste and
more flexibility.

Jeff Pastula: Magellan Aerospace

is an international company with 4200
people working under the Magellan
umbrella across North America, Europe, and India. Magellan's Winnipeg
division manufactures aeroengine and
aerostructures components and assemblies, space products, and a family of
rocket products. We have a long-term
agreement to supply composite and
metallic assemblies for Lockheed Martin's F-35 Lightning II program from
a dedicated facility of 140 thousand
square feet that was built in 2011 to
support the programme. We have been
in composites for more than fifty years
and have had various contracts with
other companies. This is a major contract right now and is a focus for us in
Winnipeg. Our Advanced Composite

Manufacturing Centre is a completely
environmentally controlled facility
and Magellan invested significantly to
build a world class facility. We have two
sophisticated machines in the facility
that drill the products, called Precision
Milling Machines (PMMs). We also
have a state-of-the-art laser ultrasonic,
one of only four in the world. We use
lasers to measure the composite parts
and look for voids. Most companies use
liquid squirters, in our case the laser
acts like the water column and is able to
pick up whether there are any voids in
the parts.
Of course, we also have clean rooms
and paint shops for making parts like
most of composite companies around
the world. Magellan is currently operating at full rate on the F-35 horizontal
stabilizer program and have delivered
approximately 20% of the shipsets.
With more than 800 assemblies remaining to deliver there is still time and
opportunity to adopt further program
efficiencies. Magellan has met every
technical and production challenge on
this program so far and, in return, the
program has met all of our expectations.
The long-term nature of the programme
has given us the opportunity to buy and
implement state-of-the-art equipment,

state-of-the-art processes; we have met
our customers' requirements and continue to deliver on time. We still have
800 ship sets left to go, so it is a long
road and a lot of opportunity to be more
efficient and more productive.
Where did the idea of
the kitting system come from?

J.P.: Actually, it came right from our

shop. The operations people from our
facility saw an opportunity for this when
the time came to purchase new cutters.
Our cutters were 30 years old and we
wanted to buy much more efficient
cloth cutters for the process. When we
decided that, we looked at all the other
advantages that we could add to that
so that we could get the most efficient
process. We looked at kitting and sorting as an opportunity to connect it with
the cloth cutting function. We started
our journey looking for a company that
actually do that. We identified a cutting
company, and although they had never
built a machine that combined a cutter
sorter and robot, they offered to find
a solution for us. We continued our
search for a fully capable machine and
finally came across Airborne on a Google search. We watched the video of their
equipment and capabilities and ended

N°138 January - February 2021

/ jec composites magazine

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JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #138 - January/February 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #138 - January/February 2021
