"We can actually solve the aircraft production problem by improving the production line."
Currently, fighter jet production, including the latest J-10, uses fixed-station production lines.
Fixed station production line, as the name suggests, the aircraft is in the same position throughout the production process.
Assuming that there are a thousand processes in aircraft production, then there will be a thousand groups of workers who will assemble the aircraft at the same fixed station according to the assembly sequence.
This assembly speed is very slow, and it may take half a month to assemble an aircraft.
An entire production line only assembles dozens of aircraft a year.
This is also the current status of domestic aircraft production. Of course, in fact, most aircraft in the world are produced in this way.
After Zhang Xingyang and Song Tianxing finished chatting about the use of composite materials on aircraft, they then talked about the mass production of aircraft.
Due to various reasons, the mass production of the J-10 will not go smoothly, the most important of which is the aircraft assembly problem.
Without a significant increase in the number of workers, the efficiency of a fixed-station production line is very low.
"In fact, we can learn from the automobile production industry. The continuous flow production lines they use are much more efficient in manufacturing!"
Song Tianxing can certainly understand Zhang Xingyang's suggestion, but the difficulty of final assembly of aircraft is much higher than that of cars.
It's not that easy to solve.
"Automobile assembly can continue to assemble during continuous movement because the scale of their equipment is not complex and the final assembly is not difficult."
"The various components of the final assembly of the aircraft are too complex and cannot be assembled while constantly moving like the automobile production process."
Song Tianxing only thought of Zhang Xingyang and did not particularly understand the difficulty of aircraft manufacturing.
I briefly explained to him the difficulty here.
Although continuous flow production lines can indeed greatly improve the efficiency of final assembly, aircraft assembly does not specifically use this production method.
Because the size and complexity of aircraft parts far exceed those of automobiles.
"It is indeed unrealistic to completely adopt a continuous flow production line, but using a continuous flow production line in part of the aircraft final assembly process can also greatly improve the efficiency of aircraft final assembly!"
Zhang Xingyang naturally knew what Song Tianxing was thinking.
But Zhang Xingyang really wants to know more about mobile production.
When Song Tianxing heard that some parts used continuous flow production lines, he seemed to have a vague sense of what Zhang Xingyang wanted to express, so he quickly said:
"How is it partially adopted?"
"Tell me carefully!"
"For example, we can divide the final assembly production of a fighter jet into five parts, and assemble the five parts of the aircraft at five relatively fixed stations at the same time."
"After the assembly of each part is completed, various means are used to move each part again."
"This is equivalent to assembling different processes of multiple aircraft at the same time, which can greatly improve the overall assembly efficiency of the aircraft."
"And because the assembly operations are not performed while the aircraft is moving, but only when the aircraft is stationary."
“So the construction of a production line is much less difficult than a continuous flow production line.”
Song Tianxing's eyes lit up little by little as he listened to Zhang Xingyang's explanation of later generations' understanding of the aircraft pulsating production line.
It was like a hungry wolf seeing a fat prey.
"Xingyang, I didn't expect you to have such novel and profound insights into the industrial production of aircraft. You are truly a genius!"
In fact, in a few decades, this knowledge will already belong to the trash. Anyone who pays a little attention to this aspect can know it.
Not to mention that hundreds of years later, the production of aircraft in the atmosphere has long since achieved the era of fully automated production.
But at this point in the 1990s, the pulsating production line was still a very fresh and advanced concept.
You must know that the first pulsating production line in the aviation manufacturing field has not yet appeared at this time. It will not be considered the first pulsating production line in the world's aviation manufacturing field until Boeing Company launches the first aircraft pulsating production line at least three years later.
"Actually, this is not a new concept."
Zhang Xingyang is not particularly excited about anything. After all, when it comes to pulsating production lines, there are actually some precedents in other fields.
It's just that in the field of aviation manufacturing, no one has officially proposed it yet.
"We did the same thing with automobile production when heavy industry was underdeveloped."
“If we cannot establish a continuous flow production line, then we will lower the manufacturing requirements and partially adopt flow assembly.”
Song Tianxing is not a young man anymore. He has naturally experienced all kinds of things in the manufacturing industry in the past years and understands this history.
"Moreover, we can also iteratively upgrade the production line in the future and adopt modular allocation of most parts to improve the efficiency of the production line."
Modular production is still a newly emerging concept at this time, but everyone is doing research on it, so Song Tianxing also has some understanding of it.
"Modular production efficiency can indeed be improved, but this requires adjustments to the entire assembly line, which requires a large amount of time, manpower and material resources."
"Chengdu Aircraft currently does not have that much transformation funds to transform the production line."
Although the idea is beautiful, it takes a lot of money to turn it into reality.
"The export of Chengdu Aircraft's aircraft is not going very smoothly now. Everyone internationally is pursuing the replacement of third-generation aircraft."
"Like the J-7, which has been exporting and earning foreign exchange in the past few years, it has not been able to be sold internationally these years."
Song Tianxing kept talking about Chengfei's current difficulties and was a little worried about funds.
"The funding issue is indeed a relatively big one, but if Chengdu Aircraft really wants to build a pulse production line, the country and the Air Force will probably not be stingy in allocating funds."
"After all, if the pulsating production line is completed, the production efficiency can be improved by at least four to five times."
"A production line can produce at least nearly a hundred J-10s every year. I don't believe that the big guys in the Air Force are not interested!"
"As long as you reveal this news to them, I don't think you need to look for money. The big guys will take the initiative to ask you for money from the country!"
Zhang Xingyang has a different view. These days, the Air Force's desire for advanced fighter jets has reached an almost hungry level.
As long as there are a large number of J-10 fighter jets for them, Zhang Xingyang has no doubt that they can even make it to the top.
At this time, Song Tianxing also somewhat understood what Zhang Xingyang meant and said:
"Also, after learning that our J-10 successfully made its first flight, several air force chiefs asked when mass production of equipment for the troops would be possible."
"If they knew they could produce hundreds of aircraft per year, they would probably push forward with this matter no matter what!"
(End of chapter)
