BAE Turns on New Automated F-35 Facility

10/19/2012

10/18/12  According to The Engineer:

The new Integrated Assembly Line (IAL) at the company’s Samlesbury site in Lancashire will help the company ramp up production from the current level of one per week up to one per day by 2016

Installed in the latest phase of the new F-35 fighter jet manufacturing facility, the IAL will use an automated overhead monorail system to ‘pulse’ sections of the rear fuselage of all three types of F-35 (conventional, STOVL and carrier variants) around an assembly line, building them as they go and allowing more units to be produced more efficiently.

Chris Allam, vice-president for F-35 at BAE Systems, and Eric Branyon, F-35 programmes director at Lockheed Martin, discuss the new F-35 production line in Samlesbury, Lancashire.

The video showing the facility and the discussion of the facility can be seen on The Engineer webiste.

http://www.theengineer.co.uk/production-engineering/news/bae-systems-switches-on-assembly-line-for-f-35-jets/1014307.article#ixzz29jtdfpD9