Res Eng Design
DOI 10.1007/s00163-017-0269-0
ORIGINAL PAPER
A digital thread approach to support manufacturing-influenced
conceptual aircraft design
Dennis J. L. Siedlak1 • Olivia J. Pinon1 • Paul R. Schlais1 • Todd M. Schmidt1
Dimitri N. Mavris1
Received: 6 July 2016 / Revised: 27 August 2017 / Accepted: 31 August 2017
 Springer-Verlag London Ltd. 2017
Abstract This paper proposes and demonstrates the inte-
gration of manufacturing and production considerations
with traditional aircraft design metrics to support afford-
ability-based design. To enable the necessary multi-disci-
plinary trades, a digital thread approach is proposed that
integrates detailed models and analyses. The digital thread
refers to linking models from various disciplines through
common inputs and data flows with the goal of speeding
design time and enabling trades across traditionally iso-
lated disciplines. When used within an overarching design
process, the production cost, rate, and efficiencies of non-
conventional designs in variable demand environments can
be quantified and traded early in the design process. In
particular, the methodology is demonstrated using a
wingbox design problem such that aircraft performance
considerations, production rate, manufacturing cost, and
financial planning metrics can be traded within a para-
metric, visual trade-off environment. The environment,
combined with a multi-objective optimization routine,
facilitates effective affordability-based tradespace explo-
ration during the early stages of the design of non-tradi-
tional aircraft (e.g., those utilizing composite structures)
under demand variability. An F-86 Sabre redesigned
wingbox using three separate manufacturing concepts is
used as a proof-of-concept for this research.
Research conducted while attending the Georgia Institute of
Technology.
& Dennis J. L. Siedlak
dsiedlak3@gatech.edu
1 In the traditional aircraft design paradigm, up to 2/3 of a
Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory, The Daniel
Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, Georgia
Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA
•
Keywords Design process  Aerospace design 
Manufacturing  Production  Affordability  Digital thread
1 Introduction
This paper proposes and demonstrates a design approach
that incorporates manufacturing and production consider-
ations into the early aircraft design process. This is
accomplished by integrating detailed aircraft wing design,
process-based costing, and production simulation tools.
Surrogate modeling is leveraged to enable detailed results
to be used for early design, optimization, and decision
support. These capabilities support the aerospace and
defense industries in their shift towards affordability-based
design (Air 2016; LCA 2015) and the design of resilient
systems, which entail systems that ‘‘need to be manufac-
turable, readily deployable, sustainable, easily modifiable,
and cost-effective’’ (Goerger et al. 2014).
Affordability can be thought of as the balance between
cost and performance throughout the product’s life-cycle
(Defense Acquisition University 2012; Blair and Hartong
2000; Schaffner et al. 2013; Tuttle and Bobinis 2013), so a
more costly system that provides better capabilities may be
more affordable than a less expensive option. Recent
designs, however, have experienced schedule delays and
cost overruns (Captain 2009). Two of the many issues that
contribute to the lack of aircraft affordability, namely (1)
the expanded use of composite materials and (2) a large
and increasing amount of variability and uncertainty in
product demand, are addressed through the presented
approach.
system’s cost is committed before Detailed design (Mavris
et al. 1998; Stebbins 2015; Asiedu and Gu 1998) and
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70–90% before production begins (Marx and Thut 2012).
However, as seen in the literature, traditional design
methods struggle to quantify the impact of design choices
when designing unconventional vehicles in new physical
and economic environments (Briceno et al. 2013; Rush and
Roy 2000; Eaglesham 1998; Peters et al. 1994; Sundaresan
et al. 2012; La Trobe-Bateman and Wild 2003; F35 2015;
Curran et al. 2001; Campbell 2003; Siedlak et al.
2015, 2014; Werner-Westphal et al. 2008). In other words,
designers are losing the ability to capture and understand
the cost-capability trades before costs are committed.
The proposed non-weight-based methodology integrates
parametric, physics-based structural design and aircraft
performance models alongside process-based costing and
discrete-event simulation into a single digital thread. The
digital thread refers to the ‘‘communication framework that
allows a connected data flow and integrated view of the
asset’s data throughout its life-cycle across traditionally
siloed functional perspectives (Leiva 2016).’’ By providing
better cost estimates during early design and better col-
laborative decision-support capabilities, the methodology
and design environment developed throughout this research
help support the primary needs identified by the Model-
based Systems Engineering (MBSE) and Engineered
Resilient Systems (ERS) communities (Holland 2015;
Neches 2011; Spero et al. 2014b; Ramos et al. 2012;
Goerger et al. 2014). In particular, by enabling the inte-
gration of various design tools early in the design process,
this methodology represents a first significant step towards
achieving the goals of the digital thread, namely ‘‘more
producible, serviceable, usable, sustainable, safe and
lower-cost designs with shorter product development
cycles and fewer design iterations (Stebbins 2015).’’
The paper is structured as follows: Sect. 2 reviews
existing approaches and discusses research opportunities
and methodology needs. From this review, the core prin-
ciples of the proposed methodology are presented in Sect.
3. Section 4 then discusses how the general design
methodology is applied to the wing design problem. Sec-
tion 5 provides a description of the analytical capabilities
that this methodology enables and further discusses the
parametric environment developed to support designers. A
particular emphasis is brought on affordability-based trades
between cost and capability that can help designers make
decisions over the product’s life-cycle. Section 6 discusses
optimization results, hence highlighting the trades and
sensitivities that are now quantifiable during the early
design stages. The paper concludes by discussing potential
implications of implementing this multi-disciplinary design
environment and proposed areas of future research.
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2 Literature review
The aerospace and defense industry is faced with the need
to deliver products with superior performance (e.g., higher
speed, longer range, reduced fuel burn, etc.) at a reduced
cost (Raj 1998; Usher et al. 1998; Curran et al. 2001;
Siedlak et al. 2015; Air 2016; LCA 2015). Many design
techniques have been developed to support this objective.
Such techniques include Product Lifecycle Management
(PLM) (Stark 2005), Integrated Product and Process
Development (IPPD) (Magrab et al. 2009; Usher et al.
1998), and the Lean Aircraft Initiative (LAI) (Usher et al.
1998). These techniques have been successfully imple-
mented on programs such as the Boeing 777 (Usher et al.
1998) and F/A-18 E/F (Haggerty 2004), both of which
were ahead of schedule and under budget. However,
despite the successes of the 90’s, the early twenty-first
century has seen multiple aerospace programs, such as the
F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (Oppenhein 2011; F35 2015),
Boeing 787, and Airbus A380 (Michaels 2012), plagued
with cost overruns and delivery delays (Wu 2014). While
IPPD and PLM have had some successes, these approaches
tend to focus too often on reducing costs and not improving
affordability (Usher et al. 1998; F35 2015). In other words,
while these and similar techniques do analyze cost during
design, the analysis generally is conducted in a siloed
manner (Spero et al. 2014b). To reverse this trend,
methodologies are being developed and implemented that
integrate quantitative analysis from a myriad of disciplines
to investigate many aspects of a system’s affordability and
resiliency during design (Goerger et al. 2014; Spero et al.
2014a, b; Ramos et al. 2012). The following section
reviews such methodologies and discusses research needs
as they pertain to improving early system design.
2.1 Multi-disciplinary design methodologies
Model-based systems engineering has arisen as an impor-
tant design tool for complex, interdisciplinary systems.
MBSE seeks an ‘‘integrated holistic approach (Ramos et al.
2012)’’ to help the ever-increasing number of stakeholders
understand and design a new system (Ramos et al. 2012;
Estefan et al. 2007). It can be described as ‘‘the formalized
application of modeling principles, methods, languages,
and tools to the entire life-cycle of large, complex, inter-
disciplinary, sociotechnical systems (Ramos et al. 2012).’’
Hence, MBSE ultimately hopes to provide a common
interface between various models and disciplines to enable
a system-level understanding of the design’s performance
across domains.
The Department of Defense’s push towards the devel-
opment of engineered resilient systems has similar goals,
Res Eng Design
namely ‘‘to transform the engineering of complex systems
to make the resulting systems more affordable, effective,
and adaptable (Spero et al. 2014b).’’ ERS seeks to improve
the effectiveness of engineering by advancing following
areas (Lucero 2011): (1) systems representation and mod-
eling, (2) characterizing changing operational contexts, (3)
cross-domain coupling, (4) data-driven tradespace explo-
ration and analysis, and (5) collaborative design and
decision support.
2.2 Research needs
In support of these strategic thrusts, many research
opportunities have been suggested that are relevant to the
current work. First, the ‘‘-ilities’’ of a design should be
characterized and quantified (Spero et al. 2014b). Model-
ing life-cycle costs and manufacturing has been specifically
identified as a technical challenge (Holland 2015). It is
ultimately desired to ‘‘build cross-impact models and
relationships that quantitatively determine the impact of
changing one ility on the other ilities (Spero et al. 2014b).’’
Spero et al. specifically mentions the need to consider
affordability during design (instead of the traditional sep-
aration of performance and cost trades). Second, an
approach to link the tradespace during conceptual design is
identified as a research need (Spero et al. 2014b; Neches
2011). Especially during conceptual design, where freedom
is the highest, it is desired to have (1) a ‘‘quick assessment
of ‘goodness’ (Spero et al. 2014b),’’ (2) the ability to link
to more detailed tools, and (3) the quantification of how
domain-specific choices propagate to system-level perfor-
mance (Spero et al. 2014b).
Finally, the need to support collaborative decision-
making across disciplines through tradespace exploration is
identified (Spero et al. 2014a, b; Neches 2011). Relevant to
the current work is the desire to understand the system’s
performance across multiple disciplines for uncertain
futures (Spero et al. 2014b). Indeed, in addition to cost-
capability trades, the resilience and affordability initiatives
also contain a time element. As such, there is a need to
assess the system’s performance against multiple, uncertain
program futures or scenarios (Siedlak et al. 2015; Vascik
et al. 2016; Bobinis et al. 2013; Wu et al. 2014; Tuttle and
Bobinis 2013; Libby et al. 2017).
The general theme presented throughout these design
approaches and methodologies (PLM, IPPD, MBSE, and
ERS) is the desire for better communication (among tools,
disciplines, and decision-makers) to support early design.
Most of past multi-disciplinary efforts have focused on
the integration of design and manufacturing. Such meth-
ods, as discussed in (Das and Kanchanapiboon 2011), focus
on the relationship between design parameters and cost to
either assess the manufacturability of a design or provide
estimates of the manufacturing costs. Das and Kan-
chanapiboon, for example, developed a model for manu-
facturability analysis that estimates unit production cost. It
assumes that the bill of materials part lists, assembly plan
and initial costs estimates for part procurement and
assembly rates are available (Das and Kanchanapiboon
2011). Bao and Samareh (2000) developed a methodology
that integrates process-based manufacturing and assembly
cost models in a traditional performance-focused multi-
disciplinary design and optimization process. Curran et al.
(2007) discuss the development of a digital design and
manufacturing modeling platform with integrated cost
modeling capabilities.
Past approaches that focus on the link between design
and manufacturing suffer from the following shortcomings.
Many of these approaches are completely dependent on
existing data. As such, their applicability is limited to the
range of available data. While they capture the relationship
between design parameters and manufacturing-related
costs, most approaches do not allow for trades between cost
and performance to be conducted. This limits their ability
to identify a feasible design and cost reduction opportuni-
ties. Many of these approaches also limit themselves to a
manual exploration of the design/process space. As such,
they do not support any sensitivity and requirements
analyses and provide no information as to the interactions
that exist between the different disciplinary variables. The
approaches that do mention some optimization capabilities
either limit themselves to a discussion of the benefit they
could bring or only optimize a single criterion (cost).
Finally, most approaches do not account for the pro-
ducibility of a design, making it impossible to evaluate
whether the chosen design can be produced at the required
rate without incurring any additional costs. The ones who
do account for producibility lack the flexibility to para-
metrically modify the production model and do not capture
changes in demand, hence limiting their ability to identify
design that are robust to demand variability.
The following section discusses how the proposed
methodology helps address the shortcomings and needs
identified in the current literature:
1. Linkage of cross-disciplinary models and analyses
2. Quantification of the ‘‘-ilities’’ of a novel design
3. Quick propagation of design choices through each
discipline
4. Improved design space exploration across disciplines
5. Support for collaborative decision making and data
analysis
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3 Proposed methodology
The goal of the proposed methodology is to provide an
integrated framework and collaborative design environ-
ment capable of quickly assessing and visualizing the
impact that changes in system design and factory config-
uration have on aircraft performance, production rate,
backlog, and profitability. The developed environment,
thus, represents an integrated digital thread of analyses
from aircraft performance through structural analysis and
manufacturing cost to production rate over time. Through
the integration of these analyses, the environment is cap-
able of comparing the affordability of proposed designs
under changing production conditions without a library of
relevant historical data.
Table 1 illustrates how the aircraft design and produc-
tion planning exercises can be aligned. It further summa-
rizes the kind of trades and decisions that can be made
during each phase (Sundaresan et al. 2012). The concep-
tual design phase is mainly concerned with the identifica-
tion of a feasible design space and the selection of a
candidate design concept within that space. At this stage of
the design process, the design space is primarily con-
strained by performance requirements. Bringing production
considerations and, consequently, production-driven
requirements in the early design stages requires detailed
information about key production parameters. To be of any
value, this information, which traditionally becomes
available much later in the design process, needs to be
brought forward in a parametric fashion so as to enable the
quick evaluation of multiple design concepts.
For unconventional designs that lack reliable historical
data, such information is often generated through
Table 1 Characteristics and decisions made at each aircraft and production planning phase (Sundaresan et al. 2012)
Design phase Aircraft design
Conceptual Requirements analysis
Multiple concepts
Low fidelity
Rapid assessment
Trade-off analysis
Preliminary Frozen configuration
Medium fidelity
Sub-component validation and design
Test and analytical database development
Detailed High fidelity
Design tooling and fabrication process
Design actual pieces
Test major items
Performance engineering completed
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modeling. The model, depending on its level of fidelity,
may run slowly and may also encapsulate a large number
of variables. These two characteristics, in turn, tend to
significantly limit the amount of information that can be
abstracted and rapidly visualized (Mavris et al. 2010). A
successful approach that addresses these challenges, while
providing an all-encompassing model for exploring a
complex design space, is surrogate modeling (De Baets
and Mavris 2000; Kamdar et al. 2003). Surrogate modeling
techniques, by constructing mathematical approximations
of analysis codes, supports the integration of discipline-
dependent and often organization-dependent codes while
also representing an efficient way to lessen the time
required for an integrated environment to run. These
techniques also yield insight into the relationships between
design variables (inputs) and responses (outputs), hence
facilitating concept exploration (Simpson et al. 2001). By
allowing analyses to run faster, such techniques also allow
for more detailed models and codes to be brought forward
in the design process and for integrative visual environ-
ments to become parametric and interactive (Ligetti et al.
2003).
The core principles of the proposed methodology, thus,
include:
• Replacing cost estimating relationships (CERs) and
other historical data-based producibility estimates with
bottoms–up, process-based costing and production
simulation tools
• Integrating inputs, outputs, and models into a single
digital thread to speed data collection and design space
exploration
Production phase Production planning
Strategic
Production rate
Production cost
Production capacity
Tactical
Preliminary production plan at work-station level
Higher fidelity cost and production rate estimation
Operational
Detailed work plan on the factory floor
Res Eng Design
• Generating surrogate models for all disciplines cap-
tured within the design environment. This enables:
• The creation of a real-time, collaborative tradespace
exploration environment
• The use of analysis results from detailed tools for
Conceptual design. For example, a surrogate model
of production simulation results can replace the
utility function commonly used in epoch-era anal-
ysis (EEA) (Vascik et al. 2016; Wu et al. 2014).
• Affordability-based, multi-objective optimization.
Surrogate models make objective function evalua-
tions essentially instantaneous; thus, metaheuristic,
multi-objective optimization runs can be feasibly
completed.
The following section discusses the application of this
methodology to support the design of an F-86 Sabre’s
wingbox.
4 Methodology application
The design of an F-86 Sabre’s wingbox (illustrated in
Fig. 1) is used to demonstrate this methodology. The wing
is designed such that the entire vehicle meets its perfor-
mance requirements. The wing is also designed as to
improve producibility. The reasons for selecting a wingbox
as a proof-of-concept are as follows: (1) there is a direct
link between wing design and vehicle performance, (2)
there are a variety of structural components in a wingbox
with many potential manufacturing processes, and (3)
composite wing design is a current issue in the aerospace
industry.
Furthermore, a military aircraft is chosen because mis-
sion capability/performance versus cost versus producibil-
ity trades are of great importance to the affordability-based
acquisition paradigm. While some survivability require-
ments (such as turn rate or payload capacity) may be non-
negotiable, others that may not directly impact the pilot’s
probability of surviving the mission (e.g., range and take-
Fig. 1 Example wingbox
structure
Stringers
Spars
off/landing field length) could potentially be relaxed to
reduce costs. Finally, the significant amount of information
available about such fighters (Fli 1960; Wagner 1998) can
be used to support the development of the performance and
structural models.
The remainder of this section discusses the spiral
development approach followed and the integration of
models to estimate the performance, cost, and producibility
of a wing design. Because of the impact that structural
components have on manufacturing and production rates,
the focus will mainly be on the development and integra-
tion of structural design, process-based costing, and pro-
duction simulation tools.
4.1 Leveraging past efforts
This work builds on and realizes the Manufacturing-In-
fluenced Design (MInD) (Ceisel et al. 2012; Briceno et al.
2013) and initial iterations of the Manufacturing-Influ-
enced Design Production Optimization (MInDPRO)
frameworks (Siedlak et al. 2014, 2015) developed by the
Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory (ASDL) at the
Georgia Institute of Technology. Figure 2 presents an
overview of the models and tools implemented within this
framework. The original MInD framework encompasses all
analyses presented in Fig. 2 except for the production flow
model. The performance model is calibrated to the original
F-86’s performance, and the structural models contain
similar components (e.g. ribs, skins, spars, and stringers) as
seen in the original F-86.
The primary contribution of the MInD framework is to
allow for process-based costing information to be brought
forward in the design process. SEER for Manufacturing
(SEER-MFG) is a commercially available process-based
time and costing tool that utilizes empirical data collected
under the U.S. Governments Composite Affordability Ini-
tiative to estimate manufacturing cycle times and costs
(Russell 2006). In particular, it provides the capability to
estimate costs for a variety of structural components and
manufacturing process options (e.g., hand layup
Wing Skin
Ribs
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Fig. 2 MInDPRO framework
vs. automated tape laying). It is also widely used within the
aerospace industry for cost estimation (Ceisel et al. 2012;
Kaufmann et al. 2010). SEER-MFG requires detailed part
geometry information (e.g. lengths, thicknesses, ply
tables for composite parts, etc.) to develop the cost esti-
mations. Hence, a structural design model is included to
translate outer mold line geometry (e.g., wing area, aspect
ratio, etc.) into this detailed information. The Detailed
Manufacturing Translator then supplements this data with
rules of thumb identified through interactions with subject
matter experts. An example of such rules includes using the
length of a joint to calculate the number of fasteners
required. The reader is invited to consult (Ceisel et al.
2012; Lee et al. 2012; Sundaresan et al. 2012) for a full
description of the MInD framework’s development and its
capabilities.
The ensuing sections discuss how the authors leveraged
and modified the MInD framework to address the chal-
lenges resulting from demand variability and to enable
more informed, affordability-based design decisions.
4.2 Manufacturing-influenced design production
optimization (MInDPRO) multidisciplinary
framework
The MInDPRO framework expanded upon the MInD
framework by including a module to provide production
rate and efficiency information. This is accomplished
through the development of a discrete-event simulation in
Simio. The work presented herein further expands upon the
MInDPRO framework by including: (1) additional costing
models, (2) expansion from a yearly production rate to
production over time, (3) economic and cash-flow analysis
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for the production run, and (4) a multi-objective opti-
mization routine. These capabilities are intended to tie the
previous efforts together into an approachable, collabora-
tive design and optimization environment. The additional
costing models are incorporated to better capture the
infrastructure, equipment, and tooling costs associated with
the design (Heckwolf 2014) to support more meaningful
production cost analysis. By looking beyond a single year
of production, the framework enables the analysis of pro-
duction runs across multiple time-spans. In doing so, the
method can now consider the flexibility of a production
system and its ability to respond to changes in demand.
Furthermore, as detailed costs are broken down across a
number of cost categories, cash-flows can be generated for
a variety of designs, demand scenarios, and economic
assumptions. Finally, because the product and process
design space spanning the entire production run is too large
for effective manual exploration, a multi-objective opti-
mization routine is developed. The optimization supports
sensitivity and requirements analyses to understand the
interactions between wing design, demand, requirements,
and factory setup and evolution modeled during previous
iterations of the methodology. The following sections
further describe the implementation of these capabilities.
4.3 Production flow modeling
A major portion of the research methodology is concerned
with the development of a Preliminary production model.
After a literature review of various composite manufac-
turing and production methods (Anderson et al. 2004; Cole
2001; Sloan 2012), along with discussions with subject
Res Eng Design
matter experts, a discrete-event model is developed in
Simio.
Simio is chosen as the modeling platform for the pro-
duction component because it is capable of tracking key
production statistics, it has an interface that lowers the
learning curve compared to other discrete event simulation
programs, and it easily links to excel and can be run in
server mode to facilitate running many cases for a Design
of Experiments. Figure 2 illustrates how the Production
Planning Optimization (PRO) component (in green on the
figure) is integrated into the existing MInD framework. The
following section discusses the logic and flow between the
geometry, manufacturing, and production elements before
describing in more detail the modeling of the production
flow itself.
4.3.1 Framework overview
Outer mold line (OML) dimensions (e.g., wing area, aspect
ratio, etc.) are fed into MInDPRO’s structural optimization
models to generate more detailed part dimensions
(e.g., spar length, ply count, rib quantity, etc.). These
dimensions are then used as inputs to SEER-MFG process-
based models to calculate processing times for each man-
ufacturing process. The calculated times from SEER are
used to define the process time at each station within the
production flow model. The authors are not aware of pre-
vious design methods that use production times from a
process-based costing tool to gain insight into the choice of
a design concept through DES. Finally, inputs specific to
the production module (e.g., number of technicians,
workstations, shifts, etc.) are entered, and the simulation is
run to estimate the production rate of the current wing
design and factory setup.
The model contains three lines accounting for the major
components of the wingbox: spars, skin/stringers, and the
ribs. A high-level view of the factory layout is illustrated in
Fig. 3. Within the rib line, the tool goes through the fol-
lowing production steps:
1. Tool cleaning and preparation
2. Composite hand layup
3. Layup inspection
4. Bagging/prepare for cure
5. Vacuum-assisted Resin Transfer Molding (VaRTM)
resin infusion and curing
6. Debag and inspect cure
7. Water-Jet trimming
Following this, the tool and rib component are separated.
The component goes on to a non-destructive inspection
(NDI) station, while the tool is sent back to the beginning
of the process to begin a new cycle.
The skin/stringer and spar/spar stiffener lines follow a
similar process; with the only difference being that the
components are co-cured together before proceeding to
NDI.
After each component passes through NDI, the final
wingbox assembly begins. The steps for final assembly are:
1. Rib sub-components (intercostals and C section) are
paste bonded
2. Leading edge spar and lower skin are paste bonded
3. Ribs are paste bonded to the leading edge spar and
lower skin sub-assembly
4. Trailing edge spar is paste bonded to the sub-assembly
5. Upper skin is paste bonded to the sub-assembly to form
the final wingbox assembly
Finally, the following assumptions are made. Because
the goal of this methodology is to support decision making
during early design phases, the factory floor is assumed to
be spatially unconstrained. Additionally, simplifying
assumptions about the structures are made. It is assumed
that each rib is the same size, and, therefore, requires the
same amount of processing time. The processing times for
the upper and lower skins are also assumed to be the same.
The leading and trailing edge spars, however, are modeled
separately since there is a more significant difference
between their structures then that of the skins.
The following section describes the manufacturing line
balancing methodology that is implemented to ensure that
the process proceeds in a realistic fashion for a wide range
of DoE inputs.
4.3.2 Manufacturing line balancing
Manufacturing line balancing methodologies are applied to
the production flow model to ensure that the total work in
process remains reasonable even when the DoE provides
poorly balanced inputs. This is accomplished by utilizing
real-time process logic to dynamically balance the pro-
duction lines. The logic is based on concepts from surplus
capacity and theory of constraints to achieve a low Work-
In-Process (WIP) inventory (Lee 2000; Rahman 1998).
One of the main goals of this logic is to most efficiently use
the production resources to maximize throughput while
reducing excessive WIP.
The logic stops subassembly lines (rib, skin, or spar line)
when a line creates a significant excess WIP inventory.
This logic effectively mimics the decisions that a produc-
tion manager would make and allows the model, which
would otherwise be extremely sensitive to unbalanced
production times, to accept a wide range of DoE inputs. For
example, if the number of skins produced is currently at 20
(enough to create 10 wings) and the spar line just finished
producing the 40th spar (enough for 20 wings), the model
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Rib C Section and
Intercostals Hand Rib C Section and Rib C Section and
Layup Intercostals VaRTM Intercostals NDI
Spar Stiffener Hand
Layup
Spar VaRTM Co-
Bond
Spar C Section
Hand Layup
Spar and Skin NDI
Stringer Hand
Layup
Skin VaRTM Co-
Bond
Skin Hand Layup
Fig. 3 Production model factory layout
stops the spar line to allow for the skin line to catch up. The
threshold of 10 wings was chosen to maintain a balance
between low WIP and low schedule uncertainty. The par-
allel lines (e.g., Spar C Section and Spar Stiffener parallel
lines) within each sub-assembly line are balanced follow-
ing the same logic.
Since the component hand layup stations account for a
significant amount of each line’s processing time, and
given that the processing time is directly impacted by the
number of workers laying up a part, it is important that the
workers at these stations be modeled to help balance the
lines. Using a floating worker balance (Lee 2000; Zavadlav
et al. 1996), workers are allowed to move between each
layup station within their line when needed. For instance, a
rib hand layup worker is allowed to work on upper inter-
costals, lower intercostals, or rib C sections. Because hand
layup is a manual process that can be sped up by increasing
the number of workers, up to three workers are allowed to
work on a single component at one time. The estimated
processing time that is taken from SEER assumes one
worker, but it does not allow the user to change this
assumption to modify the processing time. After discus-
sions with subject matter experts, approximations were
made about the percent improvement to the processing
time that can be seen when adding workers. With two
workers at a workstation, it is assumed that the process
takes only 60% of the original processing time with a
single worker. Hence, while having two workers would
theoretically cut the processing time in half, some parts of
the process do not benefit from having an additional
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Res Eng Design
Rib Subassembly
Ribs to Bottom
Skin and LE Spar
TE Spar to Ribs,
Bottom Skin to LE
Bottom Skin, and
Spar Pastebond
LE Spar Pastebond
Pastebond Top Skin
to Assembly
person. With three workers, it is assumed that the pro-
cessing time is now 40% of the original time.
With these assumptions, process logic is implemented
to balance the workers based on the queues forming at
each sub-component station. To simplify the model,
workers are assigned only at the beginning of each pro-
cessing step and are required to remain for the duration of
the process. At least one worker is assigned to each sta-
tion that has a tool ready for layup, with the remaining
workers being assigned to workstations that have longer
queues. The model also tracks the station that processes
the most parts (i.e., the fastest line) and only allows one
worker to be assigned there to ensure that processes that
are lagging behind have access to the additional resour-
ces. It is important to note that these line balancing
methodologies do not decrease the final throughput of the
factory floor because stations on the critical path are
never shut down. In other words, the model is able to
maintain a low WIP without negatively impacting
throughput. This enables the model to mimic a real-life
factory floor throughout the wide range of DoE inputs
without producing massive queues that would skew effi-
ciency and waiting time results.
The following section discusses how Design of Exper-
iments (DoE) and surrogate modeling techniques were
implemented to speed up the simulation runs, provide a
parametric representation of the model, and facilitate the
integration of the results into an interactive decision sup-
port environment.
Res Eng Design

4.3.3 Design of experiments and surrogate modeling In addition to the advanced composite wingbox design,
two additional parametric production and scheduling
In its current state, the model requires approximately two models are developed in Simio (one for a machined alu-
minutes to run a single, year-long production simulation, minum design and one for a conventional composite
which is too long to be an effective early design tool design). A summary of the three concepts modeled can be
(Mavris et al. 2010). Because the middle of the design found in Table 4. These three models expand the capabil-
space is of interest and there is little previous knowledge ities to trade between production concepts, materials, and
about the space, a Latin Hypercube Sampling DoE is processes alongside factory settings and wingbox design
chosen (Keane and Nair 2005; Myers et al. 2009). parameters. In particular, by considering both aluminum
ModelCenter by Phoenix Integration is used to link the and composites designs, trades between improved perfor-
structures model, manufacturing cost and time model, and mance of a composite wingbox against the possible
production flow model to automatically run the DoE cases. decreased cost and improved producibility of the aluminum
The model for an advanced composite design and process design are now available.
has 19 inputs variables (5 wing and vehicle design and 14 The production inputs and outputs for the three design
discrete factory design variables) as shown in Table 2. For concepts considered are summarized in Table 5. These
this experiment, 3500 cases were run to capture the com- inputs and outputs are for the Production Flow Model
plex nature of the design space. Indeed, the discrete inputs block in Fig. 2 only; additional responses related to
have complex interactions that are much more difficult to manufacturing cost, backlog, and aircraft performance are
model than continuous variables. calculated within the visualization environment using
As seen in Table 2, the DoE explores both wing outer previously generated surrogate models (Ceisel et al.
mold line (OML) geometry and production facility vari- 2012).
ables within defined ranges. Surrogate models are gener-
ated using Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) (Myers et al. 4.4 Development of a parametric cash flow
2009). Equations are generated for the responses shown in formulation
Table 3. Upon completion of the DoE runs and the creation
of the surrogate models, or Neural Networks, the compu- A parametric cash flow formulation, in the form of cost
tation time of the entire model is decreased from approx- equations for equipment acquisition, labor rates, material
imately two minutes to less than a second. costs, loan payments, and taxes, is also implemented and
The surrogate models generated are then integrated with integrated into the MInDPRO framework. The cost esti-
JMP visual analytics capabilities to provide the designer mating relationships are developed from a combination of
with an interactive visual environment for rapid trade publicly available cost data (such as aerospace technician
studies between performance and production. rates) and benefits information, surveys of equipment and
material providers, and process-based costing models
developed within SEER-MFG. With this information, an
estimate of total production cost per wingbox produced for
Table 2 Design of experiments input variables for advanced com- a selected wing geometry and factory layout is available.
posite model The production cost includes labor, material, equipment,
Input variables Min. Max. facility, recurring (e.g., energy, management overhead,
maintenance, etc. costs) and tooling costs. The visualiza-
Wing area ðft2 Þ 240 410
tion environment (described in Sect. 5) combines these
Aspect ratio 3.84 6.24
calculations with user defined market assumptions (such as
Range (nmi) 220 1040
interest rate, tax rate, facility depreciation rate, and salvage
Taper ratio 0.36 0.66
value) and the production rate information to produce a
Sweep angle () 28 44
cumulative cash flow. The user may get a sense of the
Tool sets (rib, spar, and skin) 2 5 proposed program’s robustness to a range of market con-
Shifts (rib, spar, and skin) 2 3 ditions by varying the economic assumptions and quickly
Workers/station (rib, spar, and skin) 1 3 visualizing how the cash flow and other economic factors
Workstations (rib and spar) 1 3 are affected. The reader is invited to consult (Heckwolf
Skin/stringer workstations 1 4 2014) for a full description of how the cost estimations
Rib NDI stations 1 5 were developed.
Spar and skin NDI workstations 1 4 The integration of the capabilities described throughout
this section enables the simultaneous evaluation of vehicle
performance, production rate, and profitability. These three

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Table 3 Design of experiments responses and justification

Responses Justification

Flow time Provides meaningful comparisons between components’ fabrication times

Process time
Workstation utilization
rates
Yearly factory throughput
Worker utilization rates
When integrated into a Gantt chart helps visualize critical path in the production flow
When used in conjunction with flow time, provides insight to waiting times, queues, and efficiencies throughout the
factory
Enables user to quickly see constraining production steps
Major response to be traded with performance and cost
Enables user to predict the number of workers required to support the factory layup stations

Table 4 Summary of manufacturing concepts modeled

Aluminum design Conventional composite design Advanced composite design
Automated machining Advanced process Advanced process

Facilities and CNC machining Automated fiber placement Hand lay-up

tools Autoclave cure Vacuum-Assisted Resin Transfer Molding
Integration Very high integration Medium integration High integration
Structural Industry practices and first order Industry practices and first order Industry practices and structural Optimization
data structural analyses structural analyses using Hypersizer
Joining Fasteners (assembly only) Co-bonding Co-bonding/Paste-bonding
Fasteners Fasteners (assembly only)

Table 5 Production model inputs and outputs

Inputs for aluminum concept Inputs for conv. composite concept Inputs for adv. composite concept Model outputs

7 wing geometry variables 7 wing geometry variables 5 wing geometry variables Throughput
Stretch forming station capacities AFPa station capacities HLUb station capacities Workstation utilization rates
Machining capacities NDIc station capacities NDIc station capacities Component/batch flow times
Number of shifts Number of shifts Number of shifts
Number of workers Number of tools available Number of workers
Number of tools available
a
Automated fiber placement
b
Hand lay-up
c
Non-destructive inspection

categories of information are parametrically linked to 4.5 Development of multi-objective optimization

inputs relating to the vehicle design, production facility
layout over time, and economic assumptions. As such, this
digital thread enables information to be brought forward
into the conceptual design phase. This represents a critical
capability, especially when investigating concepts that
depart from more conventional (e.g., aluminum) designs.
However, the manual exploration of this high dimensional
design space is not practical. To address these limitations,
multi-objective optimization capabilities are developed that
support the effective exploration of the multi-disciplinary
design space.
capabilities
Much research has been devoted to developing optimiza-
tion frameworks to bring forward multiple disciplines
(structures, weights, manufacturing costs, and life-cycle
costs) forward in the design process and then using the
resulting models to perform multi-disciplinary optimiza-
tion (Rais-Rohani and Dean 1996). A methodology is
proposed to optimize both composite and aluminum wing
skin/stringer components by minimizing a combination of
aircraft performance and manufacturing cost (Kaufmann
et al. 2010). Similarly, a study for an aluminum concept

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Res Eng Design
was conducted by integrating performance, operating costs,
and structural weight relations as objective functions (Zhao
et al. 2014). One critical aspect missing from these opti-
mization formulations is the impact of customer demand
and production over time. Optimizing the manufacturing
cost for a single component may not be the best solution
when a design with higher production rate agility may lead
to higher profitability over the lifetime of production
despite a higher per-unit cost.
4.5.1 Optimization problem description
The simultaneous wing geometry and production planning
optimization problem contains both continuous and dis-
crete variables and many constraints. The goal is to mini-
mize (or maximize) some metric(s) of value, such as cost,
performance, or backlog health. The parameters being
varied are high-level wing geometry variables and factory
configuration variables for each year of production. Mul-
tiple types of constraints need to be considered: side, air-
craft sizing, performance, and production constraints. The
side constraints are dictated by the surrogate models for
performance and production. The models are created using
bounds on the input variables, so allowing variables to have
values outside those bounds would result in extrapolation
beyond the domain of verified prediction accuracy. Sizing
constraints dictate the maximum weights allowed for the
entire aircraft. Performance constraints enforce various
point performance characteristics for the aircraft, such as
landing field length and rate of climb, set either externally
by the customer or derived by the designer. Lastly, the
production constraints enforce certain business philoso-
phies through the way that the factory is operated and
backlog managed.
A summary of the optimization problem’s inputs and
constraints is presented in Table 6, with the formal opti-
mization problem statement being defined as follows:
Minimize: f ðX; YÞ
Subject to:
gperformance ðXÞ  Rperformance
gbacklog ðX; Yi Þ  backlogmax ;
i ¼ 1;    ; nyears
ginventory ðX; Yi Þ  inventorymax ;
i ¼ 1;    ; nyears ð1Þ
 
nyears
X  1 Yiþ1;j  Yi;j 
     changesmax;j ;
   
i¼1 max Yiþ1;j  Yi;j ; 1
j ¼ 1;    ; nFactoryVariables
XL  X  XU
YL  Yi  YU ; i ¼ 1;    ; nyears
Table 6 Summary of optimization problem design variables and
constraints
Design variables
Wing geometry Planform area, aspect ratio
Taper ratio, sweep angle
Design range, rib angle, rib spacing
Factory configuration Workstations, workers
Tools, shifts
Constraints
Side constraints Surrogate modeling definitions
Sizing Max. fuel weight, empty weight
Takeoff gross weight, thrust loading
Performance Takeoff field length, landing field length
Turn rate, stall speed
Rate of climb, endurance
Production Max. backlog, inventory
Number of factory changes allowed
where f ðX; YÞ is the objective function(s) of interest
(e.g., minimize cost, maximize aircraft performance, min-
imize backlog, etc.). X are the wing design variables
described in Table 6, while Y represents the factory con-
figuration (defined in Table 6) for each year of production.
gperformance represents the performance functions of the
aircraft specified in Table 6 and Rperformance are the per-
formance requirements that would be specified by the
customer or from market analysis. gbacklog is the backlog for
each i year of production to be kept under a maximum
allowable backlog. ginventory represents potential excess
production beyond the aircraft orders to be kept under a
maximum inventory level. If orders out-pace production
(as is likely the case), then gbacklog is possibly active;
otherwise, it is ginventory that can potentially become active.
 
Pnyears 1  Yiþ1;j Yi;j 

The i¼1 maxðjYiþ1;j Yi;j j;1Þ  changesmax ; j constraint
counts the number of year-to-year changes to the produc-
tion system (e.g., workstation additions, new hires, etc.).
This constraint is put in place to ensure that changes to the
factory are not made every year. While this would enable
the system to better match the demand, this scenario is
unrealistic. Furthermore, by setting changesmax;j to a low
number, the optimizer will search for a factory that can
handle the entire range of demand with little to no infras-
tructure changes. Finally, X and Y must remain within the
side constraints defined by the surrogate models to main-
tain applicability.
With the optimization problem formulated, the algo-
rithm selection process is described in the following
section.
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4.5.2 Optimization algorithm selection
Many factors need to be considered when selecting a
suitable optimization algorithm for this problem. The
design variables determining factory configuration are
discrete, which eliminates most gradient-based algorithms.
Some of the constraints, such as backlog, are highly non-
linear functions. Also, due to the hundreds of independent
variables associated with lifetime factory configuration, the
design space most likely has many local optima. To begin
to approach the global optimum, an algorithm that has the
ability to sample across the entire design space despite the
presence of local optima is essential. Finally, the objective
and constraint functions are defined via surrogate models,
so function calls are computationally inexpensive.
These problem characteristics make a metaheuristic
search algorithm that effectively handles discrete variables
and a complex design space appropriate for the problem
(Gen and Cheng 2000; Sarker et al. 2002; Zitzler et al.
2000). Because of the extremely fast objective function
evaluations, a genetic algorithm (GA) is chosen over other
metaheuristic search strategies for this problem. The GA
parameters used for the optimization studies presented in
the Optimization Results section are summarized in
Table 7.
4.5.3 Objective function selection
One of the most influential considerations in the selection
of an optimum design has to do with the objective function
used. However, the metric used as a basis to designate the
‘‘best’’ design is highly subjective. Performance, manu-
facturer economics, or customer economics could all be
legitimate objective functions depending on the specific
design philosophy and current circumstances. To accom-
modate subjectivity, multiple objective functions need to
be defined.
A very common objective function in design problems,
especially for commercial applications, is maximizing
profit on each unit sold. If the selling price of the product is
fixed, maximizing profit is equivalent to minimizing total
expenses. However, it may be favorable to optimize a
design in terms of a subcategory of cost rather than total
cost. For example, material costs may be a major contrib-
utor to the total cost of a design that cannot be driven down
by learning curve effects or efficiency gains. Therefore,
Table 7 Genetic algorithm
Population size 1200
(GA) parameters
Generations 500
Crossover fraction 80%
Mutation rate 1%
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Res Eng Design
minimizing material cost, rather than total cost, could
provide a more robust solution in this scenario. Similarly,
other categories that could be minimized include labor,
equipment, or recurring costs.
Backlog health is another metric important to the aero-
space industry. Indeed, for many major aerospace compa-
nies today, one metric closely watched by analysts in the
financial sector is the value of orders tied up in backlog and
the number of years of production that backlog represents
(Captain 2015). The choice on how to manage backlog in
terms of what is acceptable or desired is a business pref-
erence, not a deterministic rule. As such, two objective
functions representing different philosophies were added:
maintaining a desired level of backlog determined by the
user, and attempting to reduce the customer wait time
between order and delivery to as much as possible.
By allowing the user to investigate multiple objectives,
the optimization routine enables the designers to identify a
family of alternatives that may then be compared based on
the current market requirements. Following the presenta-
tion of the visual tradespace environment in the ensuing
section, selected results from the optimization routine are
presented with a focus on illustrating the affordability
trades such an environment enables.
5 Tradespace environment
A successful multi-disciplinary design exercise requires
that all parties involved, in this case the vehicle design,
production, and manufacturing engineers, along with the
marketing and management personnel, have access to data
at an appropriate level of detail to make informed deci-
sions. A visual tradespace environment is thus developed
within JMP from the SAS Institute to effectively commu-
nicate and assess the impact of design decisions. In par-
ticular, this environment supports the needs discussed in
Sect. 2.
The following subsections describe the capabilities of
the environment with a focus on the visualizations created
to investigate the impact of demand variability on the
aircraft’s design, production plan, and program profitability
in support of affordability-based trades.
5.1 Environment capabilities
5.1.1 User inputs
The user inputs, as presented in Tables 2 and 5, are cate-
gorized in terms of aircraft wing design and aircraft pro-
duction. These inputs drive the visuals illustrating the
vehicle’s performance (discussed in Sect. 5.1.2) and single
year production performance (discussed in Sect. 5.1.3).
Res Eng Design
5.1.2 Aircraft performance
A traditional Conceptual level design tool for aircraft
design is a constraint diagram (Fig. 4). This diagram dis-
plays mission specific constraints such as takeoff field
length, climb rate, etc. as the colored lines. Feasible regions
are shown as white space, while the shaded regions indicate
space that is not feasible due to one or more constraints.
The aircraft’s thrust loading (thrust at sea level static
conditions divided by takeoff gross weight (TOGW)) is
represented on the vertical axis, while the wing loading
(takeoff gross weight (TOGW) divided by wing area (S)) is
represented on the horizontal axis. These axes are used
because they are representative of the three main outputs of
Conceptual design, namely aircraft weight, aerodynamics,
and propulsion (Raymer 2006; Mattingly et al. 2002). After
overlaying all mission constraints, a design point (green
marker) can be chosen. A typical strategy is to choose a
design point that lies near the minimum feasible thrust
loading, as this would provide the smallest engine capable
of completing the mission (Mattingly et al. 2002). By
being able to parametrically vary high-level wing design
inputs, the user is provided with the means to instanta-
neously visualize the impact(s) that such changes have on
the constraint diagram (difference between full lines and
dashed lines on Fig. 4).
5.1.3 Production analysis
To support the concurrent evaluation of alternative wing
geometries and factory settings, this environment brings
forward tools and techniques of the type used at the
Operational or Tactical level of production design (Wilson
2003; Herrmann 2006). The chosen tools, such as a process
utilization diagram and Gantt chart, are discussed below.
Fig. 4 Parametric aircraft constraint plot
The Gantt chart traditionally illustrates a project sched-
ule, along with its inner-dependencies (Herrmann 2006).
This visualization has been modified in the environment to
show the flow time of the sub-processes involved in the
creation of a complete wingbox (Fig. 5). This modified
Gantt chart, thus, helps the designer quickly identify areas
of the production floor that need improvement to increase
throughput (large waiting times on the critical path) (Józe-
fowska and Weglarz 2006). The built-in dependency feature
of the Gantt chart is used to identify the critical path (golden
lines) components of the production process. Finally, the
Gantt chart gives, for each task, the breakdown of the flow
time in terms of processing time (green lines under the main
black or golden) and waiting time (red lines).
The process utilization diagram is developed to provide
insight into the efficiencies of the different processes.
Hence, each box of this utilization chart (Fig. 5) contains a
bar chart showing processing (green), idle (red), shut down
(orange), and off shift (blue) percentages for critical
components. Furthermore, the critical path is highlighted in
dark gold. This diagram, when used in concert with the
Gantt chart, can help identify portions of the production
flow that are constraining production.
Additional detailed visuals showing how production rate
information is integrated with the vehicle performance
design are described in the following section.
5.1.4 Additional analysis capabilities
Figure 6 presents a contour profiler, which overlays
defined constraints onto 2 design variables. The constraints
and design variables can vary parametrically based on user
inputs, opening or closing the feasible design space (white
area) based on their values. Hence, this visualization allows
the designer to observe the active constraints and identify
the ones that prevent him or her the most from obtaining
the largest feasible space possible and, consequently, from
gaining the full benefits of the design concept (Mavris et al.
2010). One of the unique and critical features of the con-
tour profiler developed in the context of this research is its
ability to superimpose both performance and production
related constraints/requirements. Doing so allows the
designer to fully capture the impact of production con-
straints on the choice of a design concept.
Hence, by bringing production considerations forward in
the design process, one can ensure that the design concept
selected not only meets the traditional performance require-
ments but also satisfies any production requirements, such as
monthly production rate (represented by the red lines in
Fig. 6), set forth by the aircraft manufacturer. This essential
capability is enabled by the development and use of (para-
metric) surrogate models of the cost and production models
and their integration within the existing environment.
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Fig. 5 Parametric Gantt chart and utilization chart
Fig. 6 Contour profiler
5.1.5 Demand variability
One of the key capabilities of interest to designers is an
assessment of the impact of production layout and wing
design on profitability over the life of the vehicle. To
support this need, an interactive demand profile is
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Res Eng Design
developed (Fig. 7). The demand profile allows the user to
define a projected order history (blue shaded region)
derived from market research. The environment has order
histories from many major aircraft (Fig. 7 presents the 747
order history as an example) that may be selected to pop-
ulate the demand profile. Additionally, the user may create
Res Eng Design
a custom demand scenario by dragging points within the
interactive plot to set the projected year to year demand.
Overlayed onto the demand profile is the current proposed
yearly production plan (red dashed line). The production
plan is determined by first choosing a wing planform
design (wing area, aspect ratio, taper ratio, etc.) using the
inputs displayed in Tables 2 and 5, and then defining the
year to year factory layout. The user does this by selecting
a production year, modifying the factory layout (worksta-
tions, technicians, shifts, and tools for the subcomponent
lines), and applying the changes. The environment then
takes these inputs and calculates the yearly production rate
with the surrogate models developed using data from the
Simio models. This yearly production rate is then used for
all subsequent years (the flat portions of the red dashed line
in Fig. 7) until a new factory configuration is defined by the
user in an ensuing year (seen as the jumps in the production
plan line). It is assumed that any rate changes happen
somewhat gradually; hence, the first year after a rate
change produces OriginalRate þ
0:8ðNewRate  OriginalRateÞ wingboxes. Once all orders
have been filled, the factory is shut down and the produc-
tion rate goes to zero (as in year 51 in Fig. 7).
A plot of the cumulative order backlog in terms of
number of wingboxes is also provided, as shown in Fig. 8.
The user can easily see when the backlog exceeds an
allowable threshold during the production run and may use
this information to help decide when to make changes to
the factory layout. These visuals, along with the production
and performance plots described in Sects. 5.1.2 and 5.1.3,
enable interactive, concurrent aircraft geometry and pro-
duction plan design. The next section demonstrates how the
designer would use the environment to investigate the
Fig. 7 Demand profile populated with the 747 order history and a
proposed production plan
Fig. 8 Cumulative order backlog for the demand and production
defined in Fig. 7
production of a designed wingbox and maintain a healthy
order backlog.
5.1.6 Production use case
For this use case, the demand history is shown in Fig. 7,
and a requirement that the backlog must remain under 300
wingboxes is enforced. It can be seen that the baseline
production rate for the wing geometry selected (one that
meets customer defined performance goals (Fig. 4)) is
sufficient (red dashed line in Fig. 7 from years 1 to 13) to
remain under the backlog constraint until year 14. At this
point, the production rate must be increased to keep the
backlog below 300 orders. The provided Gantt and uti-
lization charts (Fig. 5) can be used to increase production
by suggesting meaningful changes to the production plan.
In particular, the Gantt chart shows that there is a long time
delay at the rib non-destructive inspection (NDI) step,
while the utilization chart shows that the rib NDI station is
almost fully utilized. This indicates that the NDI station is
not able to meet the demands of the rest of the factory and
is the constraining process. Therefore, an additional station
is added in year 14 to increase the production rate, as seen
by the step in production at year 14 in Fig. 7. Doing so
helps ensure that the backlog remains under 300 orders.
Further details about how to effectively increase yearly
throughput using the visualization environment can be
found in (Siedlak et al. 2014). A similar procedure is fol-
lowed throughout the rest of the production run to maintain
an acceptable backlog as it approaches the constraint.
Figures 7 and 8 illustrate the overall production plan
defined through this exercise. This use case demonstrates
again the importance of developing surrogate models of
detailed analyses in order to be able to investigate the
producibility of a concept early in the design process.
With the capability to understand the orders and pro-
duction rates of the aircraft over time, economic analyses
must be integrated to perform cash-flow and profitability
assessments.
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 Res Eng Design

5.1.7 Economic analysis Table 8 Factory layout change summary

Year Non-recurring D yearly recurring Cost/wing
The previous section focused on adapting the production investment cost produced
rate by making changes to the factory layout to maintain a
specified backlog. However, because of the high number of 1 $198,872,000 N/A $430,000
factory configurations leading to similar production rates, 14 $3,000,000 $10,810,000 $386,000
the cost of each configuration must be jointly considered to 22 $3,000,000 $10,457,000 $358,000
determine the best configuration. Therefore, various eco- 27 $0 -$14,017,000 $365,000
nomic statistics and visuals are also provided to allow the 28 $0 -$7,250,000 $430,000
decision makers to instantaneously view the economic
impact of varying a decision variable (wing area, rib NDI
workstations, etc.) alongside the vehicle performance and
production rates.
Using surrogate models developed in (Heckwolf 2014)
for the same advanced composite wingbox and user defined
economic assumptions (e.g., aircraft selling price, buyer
down payment percentage, loan interest rate, and depreci-
ation information), a cumulative cash flow diagram (Fig. 9)
is generated. Using the demand and production rates from
Fig. 7, the cash flow diagram illustrates that the program is
mostly profitable during its mature phase of higher pro-
duction from year 14 to 28. This is partially because more
volume simply means more cash inflows, but the factory is
also more efficient when producing at higher volumes. As
seen in Table 8, which summarizes the economic impact of
each change to the factory configuration during the pro- Fig. 10 Breakeven year and return on investment versus selling price
per wing
duction run, the cost per wing produced during the periods
of higher production is less than the baseline factory even
profitable and is a good measure of risk and of the time
though the total yearly recurring cost is higher than the
before other investments may be made. ROI is a key per-
baseline factory. This is due to the allocation of fixed and
formance indicator used to evaluate a program or division’s
overhead costs over a larger quantity of products during the
profitability (Braun et al. 2010), and it may be compared
periods of higher production and more efficient utilization
against the company’s Minimum Acceptable Rate of
of some workstations throughout the flow.
Return (MARR) to determine whether or not to continue
The break-even year and return on investment (ROI) for
the program (Blank and Tarquin 2012). The marketing
the chosen wing geometry and production plan against the
team will have a price range at which they believe they can
selling price per wing are provided in Fig. 10. The break-
sell the vehicle or component, allowing for determinations
even year describes the time before the program will be
to be made quickly as to the ability of the proposed design
to meet the company’s MARR. Therefore, by providing
access to economic, performance, and production infor-
mation concurrently, the integrated environment allows for
details across disciplines to be brought forward and sup-
ports collaborative, multi-disciplinary design.
A summary of the performance, production, and eco-
nomic responses available through the visualization envi-
ronment is presented in Table 9. The capability to
immediately propagate changes to the vehicle design,
factory layout, demand profile, and economic assumptions
through each of these responses helps to bridge the gaps
identified in current implementations of affordability- and
resiliency-based design methodologies. The results from
the optimization routine, described in the next section,
further illustrate the interactions between wing geometry,
Fig. 9 Cumulative cash flow diagram

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Res Eng Design
Table 9 Summary of responses
Performance
included in the visualization
environment Fuel weight
Gross weight
Take-off field length
Landing field length
Turn rate
Stall speed
Rate of climb
Range/endurance
production, and demand variability and, ultimately, their
impact on the program’s profitability.
6 Optimization results
The previous section described the manual tradespace
exploration that one can perform to identify and quantify
trends during design reviews; however, because of the
sheer size and high dimensionality of the design space,
manual exploration is not practical. Optimization tech-
niques are implemented to address this issue. This section
presents results from a variety of optimization studies using
the developed environment. Section 6.1 investigates how
the optimum wing geometry changes for different cost
objective functions using a simple trapezoidal demand
profile. This helps designers identify design features that
impact different manufacturability and producibility met-
rics. Section 6.2 presents results from a screening test to
determine which performance and backlog constraints
significantly impact the overall production cost and wing
area. The screening test, therefore, helps the design team
understand the performance and producibility requirements
that impact the design. Results from a multi-objective
optimization for an aircraft performance metric (Stall
Speed) and total material cost are presented in Sect. 6.3 to
demonstrate a newly available affordability trade. Finally,
a comparison between this work’s methodology and a more
traditional, weight-based methods is discussed in Sect. 6.4.
6.1 Optimum wing geometry for various cost
objective functions
The metric chosen for the objective function can have a
large impact on the optimum design, especially when
metrics are inversely correlated. To investigate this effect,
the wing geometry and factory settings are optimized for
the unconstrained case over a trapezoidal demand profile to
represent a simple ramp-up, ramp-down order scenario.
Some representative results are shown in Fig. 11.
Production Economics
Production rate Capital cost
Workstation utilization rate Tooling and machine cost
Component flow time Material cost
Component waiting time Labor cost
Component processing time Overhead cost
Technician utilization Return on investment
Yearly Backlog Cumulative cash flow
Excess Inventory Breakeven year
Fig. 11 Optimum composite wing geometry for different cost
objective functions
As expected, the optimal wing geometry changes based
on the objective function used. Figure 11 shows the wing
geometry from three different cost roll-up objective func-
tions overlaid on the original F-86 Sabre geometry. The
wing area when minimizing material cost is the smallest of
the three geometries at 240 ft2, while the labor and total
production costs have wing areas of 259 ft2 and 296 ft2,
respectively. A smaller area means smaller components
and less material. The minimum labor cost design has a
smaller aspect ratio than the other costs, 4.42 versus 5.45
for the material cost design. Decreasing the aspect ratio
reduces the number of ribs; through past experience with
the advanced composite model, the rib production line and
its corresponding NDI stations are often on the critical
path. Alleviating this bottleneck through a smaller aspect
ratio wing makes the overall production flow more efficient
with less idle workers, which in turn translates into the
lowest cost devoted to labor. This exercise demonstrates
how wing design impacts different cost categories, which is
an important capability to support decision making.
123

6.2 Optimization constraint screening tests
With the optimization algorithm and objective functions in
place, the design space can be studied by determining the
performance and production constraints that impact the
choice of wing geometry. One way to quantify sensitivities
is through the use of a factor screening experiment. This
type of experiment is typically performed to identify fac-
tors that have large effects on the response (Myers et al.
2009). In this application, the factors are the performance
and production constraints imposed on the design, whereas
the responses are the optimum design variable values for
the given constraint scenario.
A major observation from the factor screening study is
that the backlog requirement has major cost implications
and can even drive the values of certain wing design
variables. For both aluminum and composite designs, the
optimal design for objective functions related to the various
breakdowns of cost (e.g., total production, material, labor,
equipment, recurring, and break-even year) are most
impacted by the backlog threshold. As an example, the
screening results for the total production cost associated
with the composite designs are shown in Table 10. The
backlog-cost relationship is negatively correlated;
increasing the backlog requirement to a higher, less strin-
gent value tends to lower the total production cost. A lower
tolerance to large backlogs means production rate changes
will be more common, which implies higher costs due to
more equipment acquisitions and personnel changes. This
demonstrates the importance of considering production
rates for environments subject to demand variability when
one is concerned with the design of affordable concepts.
The original performance requirements set for the
design can impact production costs, as illustrated in
Table 10. After backlog, the next most influential con-
straints on total production cost are landing field length,
stall speed, and takeoff field length, respectively. These
constraints are direct drivers of wing area: increasing the
value of these constraints allows for a smaller wing. A
smaller wing means fewer raw materials and less manu-
facturing time necessary to build the wing, decreasing the
total production cost. Knowing the performance
Table 10 Influential constraints for composite optimum total pro-
duction cost
Constraint Relative t-ratio plot p value
Backlog < 0.0001
LFL < 0.0001
Stall speed < 0.0001
TOFL 0.0128
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Res Eng Design
Table 11 Influential constraints for aluminum wing area optimized
for minimum total production cost
Constraint Relative t-ratio plot p value
Backlog < 0.0001
LFL < 0.0001
TOGW < 0.0001
TOFL 0.0002
Stall speed 0.0005
sensitivities on high-level cost parameters early in the
design process allows the designer to understand the cost
implications of certain requirement changes and react
appropriately.
The sensitivity of optimal design parameters to the
requirements can also be studied. This again helps to
identify design characteristics that impact the performance
and producibility of a design. The sensitivities for the wing
area of the aluminum concept optimized for total produc-
tion cost are shown in Table 11. As expected, the results
show that performance constraints such as landing field
length, takeoff field length, and stall speed are major dri-
vers of the resulting wing area. More importantly, the
results also show that backlog is the main driver of wing
area. Wing area is a major driver for the dimensions of
each component within the wingbox structure; scaling up
the size of the wing increases the necessary thickness of
each component, the lengths of the spars, ribs, skins, and
stringers, and potentially increases the number of stringers.
Having a very low backlog tolerance requires the factory to
have the ability to shift to higher production rates very
quickly; a smaller wing would ease the transition to those
higher production rates because the components will be
smaller (and, therefore, have a shorter manufacturing time)
than for larger wings. While trends similar to those iden-
tified in this section are qualitatively understood, the pre-
sent methodology provides the unique ability to quantify
their impact, which in turn helps trace and facilitate dis-
cussions and compromises among the various stakeholders
involved in the design.
6.3 Multi-objective optimization results
When multiple criteria are critical to the performance and
desirability of a design, especially for competing objec-
tives, multi-objective optimization provides insight into the
best ‘‘compromise’’ designs. Multi-objective capabilities
are included in this environment using a multi-objective
genetic algorithm, the Non-dominated Sorting Genetic
Algorithm-II (NSGA-II) (Deb et al. 2002). The algorithm
Res Eng Design
was modified to accept any two objective functions relating
to production costs, backlog management, and aircraft
performance. An example of this capability is shown in
Fig. 12. This specific example shows how stall speed, a
performance requirement that directly influences takeoff
and landing capabilities, can be traded against total mate-
rial cost for the aluminum production concept. Decreasing
the stall speed requires a larger wing area and increases the
raw materials required for manufacturing. Pareto frontiers,
such as the one illustrated in Fig. 12, display the frontier of
non-dominated solutions. As such, these are powerful
design tools when conducting compromised tradeoffs
(Sarker et al. 2002). Additionally, the Pareto frontiers
display the best value a metric can achieve when the other
metric is held constant. For example, if the aluminum
design has a stall speed of 70 ft/s, the absolute best mate-
rial cost that can be achieved for the given stall speed is
$44 million. If the stall speed requirement is relaxed to
100 ft/s, the best material cost is reduced to $41.2 million.
Multi-objective optimization can provide insight on the
impact of changing requirements on the best design pos-
sible with respect to cost, production, or performance
metrics, which is the primary goal of affordability-based
design and acquisition.
The following section ‘‘closes the loop’’ by demon-
strating how the described analyses come together to ulti-
mately generate a more affordable design than when using
traditional methods.
6.4 Closing the loop—comparison to traditional
techniques
The primary argument of this paper is that the capabilities
presented can help designers and decision-makers better
110
100
Stall Speed (ft/s)
90
80
70
$40 $42 $44 $46 $48 $50
Total Material Cost ($M, 2014 USD)
Fig. 12 Requirement versus cost Pareto frontier for an aluminum
concept
collaborate during the design process and better understand
how their choices, assumptions, and constraints impact the
performance and cost of the design when compared to
traditional design techniques. Such capabilities are identi-
fied throughout Sect. 2 as essential to reducing the design’s
cost and improving profitability. This section aims to
qualitatively and quantitatively compare how well the
presented methodology achieves these goals when com-
pared to a baseline, traditional design process.
For the purposes of this comparison, ‘‘traditional design
techniques’’ entail the use of aircraft empty weight as a
surrogate for cost (e.g., the design with the minimum
weight that can meet the performance requirements will
have the lowest production cost). The capabilities and
methods presented in this paper can be compared to the
traditional method through a set of trades and experiments.
Many trades and capabilities demonstrated throughout
Sects. 5 and 6 support the utility of the presented
methodology over traditional design. First, the contour
profiler presented in Fig. 6 demonstrates that the produc-
tion rate required to maintain customer satisfaction and
make a profit can have a significant impact on the feasible
wing design. Hence, without this information, the designer
would have a limited ability to design a vehicle that could
be produced at the required rate without significant
increases in factory cost.
The collaborative analysis among the performance,
production planning, and the economic analysis teams
discussed throughout Sect. 5 again supports the develop-
ment of an affordable design. Discussions that link a
requirements change (e.g., 5 ft/s decrease in stall speed) to
a design change (e.g., increase in wing area) ultimately to
the change in production rate, cost, backlog, and cash flow
can now be supported by instantaneous, quantitative anal-
ysis. Further, as shown in Sect. 6.2, requirements from both
performance and production that drive the cost can be
concurrently analyzed. In a real-world implementation, this
insight could prove invaluable when setting requirements
on the design. Finally, the multi-objective optimization
capabilities described in Sect. 6.3 can directly inform the
design requirements by demonstrating the trades between
cost and performance. In a full implementation, this could
be expanded to many more dimensions across disciplines
to help better understand the design space across previ-
ously hidden or unquantified dimensions.
The following sub-section builds on these observations
to quantify the changes to the design that are exposed by
implementing the described methodology.
$52
123

6.4.1 Quantitative comparison of the traditional
and described design techniques
This section aims to briefly compare designs produced
using the proposed methodology against designs produced
using a traditional, weight-based technique. To enable this
comparison, a baseline wing design is generated by mini-
mizing the wing weight subject to the set of performance
constraints described in Table 6. This represents the ‘‘tra-
ditional,’’ empty weight-based design process. The tradi-
tional optimization produces the wingbox described in
Table 12.
The first quantitative comparison is to assess whether
the wing designed by minimizing the material cost differs
from that obtained by minimizing the wing weight. Upon
completing this optimization case, the two designs are
equivalent, which indicates that even though the process-
based costing module incorporates additional material
costs related to consumable and trimmed materials, this
does not significantly impact the wing’s design given the
available information and assumptions.
One of the main goals of the research discussed in this
paper is to design a wing that costs less to produce than a
traditionally designed wing. This can be examined by
minimizing the cost per wing for both scenarios. For the
traditional case, the wing is fixed to the design produced by
minimizing wing weight, and the factory settings are then
optimized to minimize the cost per wing. This represents a
best case scenario for the minimum weight design in that
the factory is optimized to minimize cost. This is intended
to isolate the impact of freeing the wing design alongside
the factory variables. For the presented methodology, the
wing design is allowed to vary alongside the factory
settings.
For this example, the cost per wing is calculated by
dividing the total yearly material, labor, and capital costs
by the number of wings produced over that year. The
results are highly dependent on the input assumptions. For
example, if the labor rate is low but material costs are high,
the minimum wing weight design is likely similar to the
optimal design. This highlights the need for collaboration
between stakeholders as enabled by the MInD
methodology.
The results from this experiment are presented in
Table 13. To demonstrate the impact of the cost
Table 12 Wing design
Design variable Value
produced by minimizing wing
weight Wing area 308.5 ft2
Aspect ratio 5.88
Sweep angle 28.0
Taper ratio 0.55
123
Res Eng Design
assumptions, the material cost is halved for the second
scenario presented.
While these results do not show a significant variation
between the designs achieved, there are some noticeable
trends between the scenarios. For this particular set of
constraints and assumptions, the labor cost per wing and
capital cost per wing can be decreased by increasing the
wing area and aspect ratio while decreasing the taper ratio.
As the material cost decreases, the design is allowed to
change further to produce improvements to the labor and
capital costs per wing. This analysis, thus, demonstrates the
potential to reduce costs by leveraging the presented
analysis methodology while further exhibiting the benefits
to the design process achieved through cross-discipline
collaboration. The following section discusses the current
limitations of the method.
6.5 Limitation of results
While the development of the analyses and assumptions
made have been discussed with subject matter experts, the
manufacturing cost model and production simulation were
not validated against historical data (as it is not available).
Furthermore, this work does not claim to provide improved
cost estimates when compared to a validated, relevant cost
estimating relationship. As such, the trends and design
recommendations made throughout the use case should not
be utilized to guide the design of an aircraft wing. Rather,
the visualizations and results presented throughout Sects. 5
and 6 are intended to demonstrate how the applied
methodology can be utilized to conduct a variety of
affordability-based trade studies. Further, the use case is
designed to illustrate that inclusion of detailed information
through the integration of surrogate models provides new
insight to the early design of an unconventional concept.
Finally, the optimization formulation as presented rep-
resents an initial attempt at the full, multi-disciplinary
optimization ultimately desired. The current formulation,
while producing results useful for the sensitivity studies
presented, is not mature enough to definitively demonstrate
that the total production costs can be consistently reduced
over the production life-cycle. The primary limitations are:
(1) the present study encompassed only the wing design as
opposed to the entire aerostructure, (2) the performance
constraints considered could be expanded to further restrict
the allowed design, and (3) by optimizing the entire pro-
duction life-cycle, the problem is highly constrained and
limits the ability of MATLAB’s off-the-shelf genetic
algorithm to maintain a large feasible population.
The following section summarizes the contributions of
this work to the affordability- and resiliency-based acqui-
sition paradigm and discusses opportunities for future
research.
Res Eng Design

Table 13 Comparison of
Minimum weight wing Freely optimized wing
production costs and design for
minimum weight and co- Baseline material cost
optimized wingbox
Cost/wing $470,800 $469,400
Labor cost/wing $164,300 $162,300
Material cost/wing $229,300 $230,900
Capital cost/wing $77,200 $76,200
Wing area 308.5 ft2 312.7 ft2
Aspect ratio 5.88 6.20
Sweep angle 28.0 28.0
Taper ratio 0.55 0.40
Halved material cost
Cost/wing $356,100 $353,700
Labor cost/wing $164,300 $162,000
Material cost/wing $114,600 $115,700
Capital cost/wng $77,200 $76,100
Wing area 308.5 ft2 313.9 ft2
Aspect ratio 5.88 6.25
Sweep angle 28.0 28.0
Taper ratio 0.55 0.36

7 Conclusion and future research
While implementations of PLM, IPPD, and the LAI during
the 1990s and early 2000s provided a major step towards
affordability-based design, the struggles of more recent
programs illustrate that there is room for improvement.
Furthermore, recent changes to the aircraft manufacturing
industry, including the transition to the usage of more
advanced composites along with the increase in aircraft
demand variability, have exacerbated the challenges faced
by designers and manufacturers. More modern design
concepts, including model-based systems engineering and
engineered resilient systems, seek to reverse this trend by
utilizing more detailed modeling techniques (e.g., physics-
based performance models, process-based costing, dis-
crete-event simulation, etc.) across disciplines during early
design.
The current work supports these methodologies by
addressing the needs identified in Sect. 2. Specifically, the
following capabilities are demonstrated:
1. Presenting a digital thread approach to link aircraft
performance, wingbox structural design, process-based
costing, and production simulation tools.
2. Demonstrating an affordability-based analysis for an
unconventional concept (e.g. a composite wingbox
lacking relevant historical cost estimating relation-
ships) by trading the system’s performance with the
manufacturability and producibility of the aircraft’s
wingbox.
3. Developing and integrating surrogate models to enable
the rapid parametric propagation of design changes
throughout multiple disciplines.
4. Demonstrating a multi-objective optimization routine
that is capable of exploring the design space. The
optimization routine is especially helpful in under-
standing how requirements from multiple disciplines
impact the design and identifying geometry choices
that impact different cost categories.
5. The developed decision-support system, by leveraging
surrogate models of detailed analyses early in the
design process, demonstrates the potential for collab-
oration among stakeholders. In particular, by instanta-
neously and interactively projecting the impact of
various decisions on performance, cost, production,
and cash flow/profitability, trades that are usually
hidden during early design are now apparent. Addi-
tionally, through the incorporation of an optimization
routine, exploration of the design space and identifi-
cation of influential requirements and constraints is
possible.
While affordability is primarily related to defense
acquisition, the ability to balance performance and cost
during design is imperative for commercial applications as
well. The general method presented in this work can easily
be adapted to support the design of a commercial aircraft.
This would require the development of performance,
structural, process-based cost, and production models
suitable for the commercial vehicle. The method could also
be utilized during the design of other subsystems and

123

components. For example, the affordability of an avionics
system is related to sensor capability and software com-
plexity (Becz et al. 2010; Szkody 1999). In this case, the
impact of interactions between the avionics and wing
design on the system’s performance and cost could be
investigated. Ultimately, it is expected that the links and
flow of data between the models could be similar and the
surrogate modeling techniques involved would remain the
same.
Future work will focus on improving and expanding the
capabilities of the optimization routine to enable further
multi-objective trades, especially between the various
manufacturing concepts and additional performance
requirements. Depending on the application, the inclusion
of additional ‘‘-ilities’’, such as maintainability and sup-
portability, could have a large impact on the affordability
of the system. In addition, the proposed framework could
be extended to study and assess the impact on cost and
performance of adding subsystems to the vehicle or
designing families of vehicles to be produced in the same
production system (Libby et al. 2017). Finally, as aircraft
manufacturers increase their reliance on the supply chain,
an analysis on the design’s impact on the performance and
agility of the supply chain becomes necessary. Tang et al.
has begun this investigation within ASDL’s manufactur-
ing-influenced design research (Tang et al. 2014).
Acknowledgements This research is funded by Boeing Research and
Technology (BR&T). In particular, the authors would like to thank
Howard Appelman, Steven Wanthal, Keith Rupel, Adam Graunke,
and Gabriel Burnett from The Boeing Company for their expertise
and support.
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