Research on Design and Planning of Pulsating Aero-engine Assembly Line based on Plant Simulation

As the social and economic value of helicopters has become increasingly significant, the demand for small aero-engines is growing dramatically. However, the traditional hangar-type assembly mode cannot meet market demand due to low assembly efficiency. Therefore, how to shorten the aero-engine assembly cycle has become an urgent problem for the aero-engine industry. This paper proposes a new pulsating assembly line planning scheme for small aero-engines. Firstly, the current status of aero-engine assembly and the characteristics of pulsating aero-engine assembly line are analyzed. Then, the design scheme and simulation implementation method based on Plant Simulation software are described from five aspects including station design, digital design of assembly process, layout design, logistics design and evaluation indexes design. Finally, we planned a pulsating final assembly line for small aero-engines of S company based on Plant Simulation, and the results showed that the assembly cycle decreased to the 4H while the utilization rate of final assembly stations is not less than 85%, which verifies the validity of the pulsating assembly line planning scheme proposed.