Good morning! Today I want to talk you about the automation systems you can find in Ford motor company, or at least, the two more interesting systems, in my opinion, while managing a big storage as Ford in Almussafes, Valencia.
All my family has been working at Ford for more than 40 years, so I am a kind of a Ford child, so that’s the reason why I’m always driving Ford cars, for those of you who have seen my car, or past cars.
When I was 16 I was offered the opportunity to do an internship at Ford during the summer break, from June to the beginning of August. It wasn’t the type of internship you do during your university studies, but a kind of internship to understand how the company of our parents was working. It was 2009, I was young and I didn’t know much about life( as now), so I was amazed by the robots and all the technology of Ford but something that surprised me the most was the warehouse where they used to have the smaller parts (like screws, nuts…). They had it automatized as in this video, but in the biggest place you can imagine and with more than 8 different robots that were supplying different desk that then were trasportedthis parts to the different plants where the assembly was made.
I’ve been trying to look for their system now, but there isn’t much information about it, nevertheless, I have found an interesting system that is working in the engines plant to manage the warehouse and make the inventory of the different engine parts.
Here you can see how all the work is developed by robots that, completely alone, manage the storage:
As always, let me know if you want to share something or if you liked it.
Hey Space Geeks! Now that we know that we are not alone, we are here, another week, with a new edition of “short but curious” post. We can’t talk always about space, but we can do it about “things that fly”, so lets start.
In this case, I would like to share you my experience about implementing a RFID system in a warehouse in the Cessna Spanish Citation Service centre here in Valencia, a maintenance centre for Beechcraft and Cessna jets.
In our case the problem wasn’t with the parts storage, but with the tooling storage. Then, we decided to apply a technique, usually used to better track the boxes or pallets in a traditional warehouse, to our tools. As the main issue of the maintenance plant was that the mechanics usually forgot where the tools where and sometimes they got loose even inside of the planes( that later were flying to countries as far away as Egypt), we decided to implement a tracking system that was already working in the aircraft building facilities. Taking into consideration that the tools in the aeronautics industry are extremely expensive, the company decided to invest in the RFID system.
The tooling department, then started to add the tags to the boxes with the tools and to the tools themselves( you can see how it works here and here). Given each tag a tracking number in the system and assigning this tracking number to the corresponding tool. Then we gave the mechanics a card that they should attach to their accreditation card( when working in the air area of an airport you should always wear an accreditation card that allows you to pass do different zones). In that way, we got the opportunity to identify which mechanic has taken each tool, at what time, and where the tool was. So at the end of the day, when doing the inventory, we were able to find who had each tool ( or who lose it).
Nevertheless, as usual with this system, not all was wonderful. There were some problems:
The tags were perfect for some tools, but big for others, especially for the calibration ones or the precision ones. We couldn’t attach it to them, as the precision would be lost. Then the only option was the 3 of this list, with its own problems.
The system sometimes fails. Mainly because the mechanics put their cards with the telephones and the cards stop working.
The tags were attached to the boxes of most of the tools. Sometimes the mechanics took the tool out of the box and then lose it. This made the system fail, as before implementing it.
Nowadays as far as I know, the system is getting better with some modifications and the Textron Aviation group( whose Cessna is part of) is starting to implement it in some other Maintenance Centers around the World.
As always, let me know if you have any question or if you want to share any similar experience.
Hey space geeks! ( Maybe I’m the only one). We are here another week with a short but curious article about space issues, that can help us to deal with the lockdown.
We know (now) that with confinement there are also other struggles that we didn’t experience before, as how to stock all the food we need for a week in our little closets. So why don’t to learn from the best? If we talk about confined people it is better to go directly to the masters in this topic: The astronauts on the International Space Station ( ISS). Some of them have spent more than a year there, and stocking food for long time missions it’s incredibly difficult, in terms of space, expiration date and weight of the mission. I have found different videos that may be interesting for you.
First we have a deep explanaiton about how to prepared the food(mostly dehydrated food), stock there in the rocket and then in the ISS.
We have much more information on the internet, but and interesting presentation about how the food is stored at the ISS can be found here, where Thomas Pesquet, an ESA French Astronaut, explains how eat without gravity. The most interesting thing, concerning the subject, of the video, is to see where they usually eat ( and to be happy because in our confinement we have a bit more space than here), and where they store the food( you can see a deeper explanation, if needed here, by Frank the Winne, the boss of the European Astronaut Centre in Cologne).
In the last years they have also started to produce their own food, so it is easier for them to have fresh food and at the same time, it is better for the mission, as they can reduce the weight, that is the most expensive thing as you have seen in the first video.
Just to finish, in this video you have a short tour of the ISS, so you can understand and see the way they store their products in all the walls and even on the floor, trying to safe space from everything. In this case is not a short video, but if you have some time it can be interesting for you.
Some more information in general about this topic can be found here, where the NASA team explains all the process, since the food is on Earth until how they eat it at the ISS.
As always, let me know if you want more post related to the aeronautics or space field and if you have any doubt or something to add.
Due to my lack of computer capacity( my main computer has a virus as the World, and died two days ago) it took around to hours to download the video from the power point and upload to Youtube, but here it is, hope you enjoy it.
Taking the floor from the Chloe’s article about the online appointment for going to the doctor, I would like to explain you the Valencian region Health system and how queuing here has been (a bit) better in the last years.
It is true that in Spain we have a Public Health System that is a global one over the territory and has been considered as one of the best systems in the world. Not only because is public and free for everybody, but for the highest quality doctors in areas as important as cancer or organ transplantation. But one main issue in our( more than good) public health system is that the health competence of the government is delegated to the regional government, so there are some differences not in the medical part but in the management part of the hospitals and ambulatories. That creates a difference not in the quality of the service itself, at all doctors will take care in the same conditions, but on the waiting time for the patients. There are, then, several regions that are implementing the ticket system as in the Valencian region, that will be explained in this article.
The system for a general appointment with the doctor works as follows:
1st – You ask for an appointment in one of the following ways:
a) In person at the reception desk of the hospital or ambulatory
b)By telephone calling your hospital or ambulatory call center.
2nd – You go to the doctor the day fixed. Then you arrive to the bulding and insert your card in a machine like this one:
Image from the Castilla-La Mancha machines. You can see more information about the system in Castilla here.Machines in Manises hospital an people queuing to get their tickets
Then, when you insert your health card and or pass the barcode and if you have an appointment correctly registered in the system, the machine print a ticket like this:
My real ticket for last week doctor in the Hospital General de Valencia
Here you can see a real ticket where first you have a code, that is the code that activates the system, so the doctor knows that you are waiting and this is the code that the system will say in the speakers and publish in a screen, in my case YTA009. This code will be the same for all your visits, so nobody knows who is first( as the professor explained during the queuing class) and at the same time nobody knows your data, or where are you going. Once the screen and the speakers say your code, you need to go to the room they tell you to see your doctor.
You have also available in the ticket your full name, time of arrival, time scheduled and the waiting room where you need to go, specify by building, section and floor in the case of a hospital or a huge ambulatory where sometimes is difficult to find your place. The best thing about it is that you can use any machine and then you have the information about how to arrive in the waiting room easily.
This system is not perfect and there are several things that could be changed as the paper print or the time between patients that still is not enough for some consults, but nevertheless this is mainly the result:
This is not the best picture, but is a real three weeks ago picture( before coronavirus crisis) at the Manises hospital
As you can see there are even some available seats what can demonstrate that the system works, not perfect, but works better than all the other systems, and the fact that a lot of regions in Spain are implementing this system is a good sign that with some investment the queuing problem we had several years ago( with more than two or three hours waiting to see the doctor) is solved.
If you want to know how this queuing system is affected by urgencies, or you have any other question after this article, please, leave some comments and I will be glad to answer and to know the systems you have in your countries.
It has been a while since the first airplane was created in 1903 in the US, just 90 years before my creation in Valencia. Since that moment the aeronautics industry has widely changed and transform into one of the most publicly traded industry.
At the beginning the planes were fully build since the first designs and calculus, until the final building just before the flight, in the same place, usually in the same hangar. But since the small traditional and familiar aircraft companies developed their knowledge and started to create strong alliances, the work was diversified in different locations where the labour work was cheaper and prepared enough to overcome the difficult work of building big airplanes.
Even for the smaller ones the different parts are manufactured by different companies: the engines, the structure and the navigation systems, naming only some of them, are all developed in completely different firms that are specialized in this concrete field. Nevertheless, there are some big companies that build the main commercial aircrafts in the world that integrate all this knowledge in their different locations. Then, there is a big constraint that Airbus, the European biggest company in the field, had to overcome years ago, how to send these different parts to the final assembly production location.
Thanks to this constraint, or problem that they didn’t know how to tackle at first, they invented the most majestic, beautiful, huge, impressive… and an interminable list of adjectives that will never describe the magic of the biggest plane flying into history. Let me introduce you to the Beluga:
Last Beluga, the XL model, the biggest plane in history. Credits to: Airbus
Last Beluga, the XL model, the biggest plane in history. Credits to: Airbus
The most amazing part of this plane is that it barely can fly, as in normal conditions, because as soon as they move the wings (with the different roll, pitch and yaw angles that the plane can move). It can only move some little angles (few actually, around 5º) because if not it could fall down ( what in aeronautics we call stall). It is incredible to think how the different parts of the plane can fly inside this big monster as in the next picture:
Credits to: Airbus
Only the way that the biggest hangar to keep this plane, was created needs a special article, as you can see here:
Credits to: Airbus
Therefore, in the case you think this is an interesting topic or some of you has a special interest in the logistics of the aeronautics/ aerospace industry, just let me know and I will produce some more articles about it.
You can see some videos and more information about the Beluga here:
The blog of Logistics at MGEPS at UPV 