In aerospace vehicle manufacturing and assembly, including that at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, measurements of composite part thickness are required for ensuring that underlying processes are within tolerance, and for achieving outer-mold line-control surface requirements.

This article describes an integrated process involving a robust and reliable method of thickness measurement followed by wirelessly transferring the data into a quality database, and directly populating measured thickness points into an electronic planning document. Without such a system, the process would consist of three steps: 1) manually taking measurements, 2) hand-documenting the measured data, and 3) manually entering the measurement data into a planning document within the manufacturing execution system. Obviously, the manual approach involving three steps is time consuming and prone to data entry errors.

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