In a small factory in an industrial estate on the outskirts of a rural central French town, a quiet technical revolution is happening at their manufacturer.
One of the largest conglomerates in the world is the inheritor of the business that used to be known as Sicma Aero Seat. The seating business, along with former Zodiac acquisitions in the US and UK, is in the process of modernising and updating what has historically been almost akin to a cottage industry.
During a visit to the Issoudun factory, the Runway Girl Network observed a lot and discussed a lot with a variety of executives, and one of the most striking elements was the way that the company is using Industry 4.0.
Virtual reality and augmented reality are being used for seat wiring in first class cabins, which is very complex.
A technician used an augmented reality system to put a wiring box under a business class seat to show both the current state and the goal state. The new pieces to be added to the assembly are highlighted compared with the existing structure already assembled, only here it is done live, in 3D, and the system checks whether it has been done correctly.
Benot Martin-Laprade says the image analysis system can detect if the wiring is bad. If the work is done wrong, the operator won't be able to close his operation.
He says that it will prompt to properly connect the cable until the element is right. The system will verify the operation at that time.
It used to take a second technician a lot of time to verify and validation the process, so the time savings from automation are significant. The process and technology comes from elsewhere in the group.
The new technologies are part of the Focus 4.0 project. The first uses of these systems started in 2021. Martin-Laprade says that the pilot phase on one of the business seats has been completed and that they plan to generalise it to the rest of the seats.
There is a entrance to the factory. The image is of John Walton.
Virtual reality is going to come soon.
The Z200 Economy seat is one of the new products being worked on by David Ballereau. Virtual reality can be used to verify the accessibility of tools during assembly.
Seat shells, paint, surfaces, and more are possibilities for the technology in the future. Virtual reality will allow the company's many sites to share not just information but expertise and processes internally, but also with upstream customers like airframers, airlines and MRO shops, and with downstream suppliers both internal and external
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