Aero & Defense Manufacturing: Model Based Systems Engineering Digital Thread for a Jet Engine Manufacturer

Challenge

An American multinational Aerospace and Defense conglomerate that is one of the largest aerospace, intelligence services providers, and defense manufacturers in the world by revenue and market capitalization. This company researches, develops, and manufactures advanced technology products in the aerospace and defense industry, including aircraft engines, avionics, aerostructures, cybersecurity, guided missiles, air defense systems, satellites, and drones.

The primary systems used to track jet engine data including engine test, configuration, repair, resolutions, events, actions, and service bulletins had become cumbersome and restrictive, making processes slow and data difficult to find and analyze. With the increased volume of engines anticipated, the explosion of engine data and the need to improve on-wing time and reduce AOGs, projects were initiated to transform engine data management.

Solution

• Use of a Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) approach to build data management and digital thread solutions iteratively using multiple Scrum/Sprint teams
• Ingest, transform and store engine data from aircraft to cloud storage
• Analytics / data science applications enabling airline customers and engineers to analyze engine performance
• Automated data pipelines
• Engine asset tracking including field service and fleet management

Outcome

Transformative digital solutions that form the core of client’s engine data management, asset management, field service and sustainment processes for the next 20 years to effectively:

• Optimize engine maintenance, asset configurations, engine repairs, and field service processes for the most advanced engine fleet worldwide
• Improve engine utilization and on-wing time and reduce MRO work on engines
• Mobilize workforce, improve adoption
• Provide advanced and predictive analytics
• New services such as leasing programs