One Powerful Cell

© Hitachi America, Ltd. 2022. All rights reserved.

Contents
• Boosting Sustainability in Aerospace With Automation & Analytics
• Nutplate Installation for Aircrafts
• The Current Challenges in the Manual Process
• The Potential to Automate & Transform
• Marching Towards a Sustainable Manufacturing Future
• The Hitachi Advantage

© Hitachi America, Ltd. 2022. All rights reserved. 1

Boosting Sustainability in Aerospace With Automation & Analytics

Aircraft manufacturing demands the highest-quality materials, highly trained experts, rigorous
quality control and precision processes that remain largely manual. These demands make it an
ideal candidate for a digital reinvention.

Aircraft manufacturers can combine major leaps in operating technology (OT) with integrated IT
for a fully optimized environment. These companies can take advantage of recent advances in
automation technology and analytics to improve manufacturing speed and accuracy and reduce
waste, making cells more efficient and sustainable.

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Nutplate Installation for Aircrafts : The Current Challenges
A single-aisle commercial aircraft contains tens of thousands of nutplates. The manual installation of each nutplate takes
3 to 4 minutes and is repeated thousands of times over the life of the aircraft as plates are removed and reinstalled for
routine maintenance, exposing manufacturers to risks such as human errors, rising costs and inefficiency.

Human Error

• Tens of thousands of manual actions that can be error-prone with potential for error compounded by
the small size of nutplate components.

Rising Costs

• Labor costs, associated errors and waste, poor inventory management, and time-consuming quality
control.

Inefficiency

• Downtime for tool and shift changes.

• Limited visibility across the production environment.

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Nutplate Installation for Aircrafts : The Potential to Automate & Transform
To address these challenges, Hitachi's Lumada Manufacturing Insights combines advances in operational automation and
data analytics to achieve a comprehensive shift to smarter aerospace manufacturing.

JR Automation's SmartAttach manufacturing cell fully automates the nutplate attachment, reducing an error-prone and
resource-intensive process that took up to 3-4 minutes to only 30 seconds.

Reduced costs and overhead Standardized process Opportunity gains

Predictable, repeatable processes Automation frees human talent for

Time savings per attachment alone
translates to dramatic cost savings.
Automation reduces wastage and
the associated costs.
dramatically increase the quality
more valuable activity, which can
and consistency of nutplate become a revenue-driver.
installation translating to a safer and
sustainable manufacturing
environment.

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Marching Towards a Sustainable Manufacturing Future

The key to modernizing the industry lies in integrating operational automation with Internet of Things (IoT)
and technologies such as the Lumada Manufacturing Insights to contribute to a smarter, more profitable
and sustainable environment across manufacturing and supply chain in a number of ways:

Comprehensive solutions: Lumada Manufacturing Insights integrates

with existing business systems and enables data to be delivered
seamlessly. This in turn, enables process optimization.
•Optimized environment: IoT capability enables detailed reporting,
maintenance prediction notice, and updates machine parameters for
precision quality control.
•Greater visibility: Lumada Manufacturing Insights provides better
visibility, thereby reducing costs while enhancing speed via enhanced
inventory control.
•Meeting changing needs: Lumada Manufacturing Insights’ modular
approach allows manufacturers to begin benefitting from smart
automation.

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The Hitachi Advantage

While efficiency is the primary pre-requisite in aerospace

manufacturing , automation can increase aircraft and passenger
safety and save costs on manual labor.

Automating nutplate installation has clear benefits, but the

SmartAttach cell is only one part of aerospace's reimagined digital
manufacturing ecosystem.

Hitachi is committed to making significant advances in automation

and analytics to improve sustainability and safety in the aircraft
industry and increase its positive impact on the world.

Read the Full Article Here:

https://social-innovation.hitachi/en-us/think-ahead/manufacturing/automation-
analytics-for-aerospace-industry/

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