Air conditioning

As mass production techniques and robotics have been with us for over a century, it's natural to think that many of the machines we see around us are themselves made by machines. Most of them, however -even the most technologically advanced -still rely on humans to build them.

At Airbus, wings are among the components which are still made mainly by hand. This is about to change, however, with automated systems being put into place on the production lines for airliners and military transports.

The automation is a result of a long-running collaboration between Airbus and product lifecycle management (PLM) software developer Dassault Systèmes. Among the aircraft to benefit from the new systems will be the narrow-body A320 airliner, and the A400M military transport aircraft.

Scheduled to replace the Hercules transport in many European airforces, the A400M was the first Airbus to be designed entirely using CATIA software, also developed by Dassault.