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Radio frequency identification (RFID) is an emerging and evolving technology that has great potential to significantly improve the flow of our factory floor, facilitate lean manufacturing, and reduce our overhead costs. A multi-disciplined team in Boeing is currently developing and testing an RFID-based system for the control and management of time-and-temperature sensitive (TATS) materials on the shop floor. The team has designed a system employing RFID tags on material packaging and readers at material storage units to automate the tracking of these materials into inventory and their consumption. This system will enable Boeing to optimize the supply chain and in-house inventory levels as well as automate the identification of expired materials. Additional benefits include the ability to automate material re-ordering with our vendors, reduce shortages, quickly locate recalled lots of materials, and warn of improperly located materials.

As an ongoing effort to achieve affordability goals and obtain additional aircraft orders, the C-17 program has developed and implemented a once-up / one-pass drilling process for the C-17 Cargo Ramp center skin to frame assembly operation. Traditionally, the aircraft assembly build process consists of the following steps: part assembly, multi-pass hole drilling, part disassembly, hole deburring, fay sealing, part re-assembly, and fastener installation. The once-up / one-pass drilling process reduces this sequence to: fay sealing, part assembly, one-pass hole drilling, and fastener installation. The new process will provide a significant recurring cost savings and cycle time reduction to the program by eliminating the labor and time-intensive efforts of disassembling, deburring, and re-assembling a skin panel 230 inches by 80 inches in size.