From the Minds at SkyThread
SkyThread is lucky to have some of the best and brightest thought leaders in our industry. Hear what we have to say.
This Plane is on the Chain (52 Weeks of SkyThread: Week 13) — Chuck Marx
SkyThread developed a blockchain enabled, trusted data network to improve the data flow on commercial aviation aircraft parts, complex assemblies, and the planes on which they fly. To ensure safe and efficient operations, airlines, suppliers, and MRO providers go to extreme lengths to validate and document that components, complex assemblies, engines, and aircraft have been maintained at the desired levels. The chain will store this validated part history by aircraft tail number. This plane is on that chain.
This Part is on the Chain (52 Weeks of SkyThread: Week 12) — Chuck Marx
SkyThread developed a blockchain enabled, trusted data network to improve the data flow on commercial aviation aircraft parts. To ensure safe and efficient operations, airlines, their suppliers, and MRO providers go to extreme lengths to validate that components, engines, and aircraft have been maintained at the desired and required levels. The chain will store and share this part history and validation and will collaborate with other industry chains to create a holistic view of the parts.
Where are my Aircraft Parts (52 Weeks of SkyThread: Week 11) — John Rassieur
One of the worst things you can hear in aerospace MRO is "Where is my part?" It does not matter who in the ecosystem utters this phrase, as it is always bad news. You cannot fix what you cannot see! The airline dispatcher, or operations lead, or aircraft mechanic knows this means a delay in a flight or in getting an aircraft ready to return to fleet operations. The MRO spares provider knows an aircraft is on the ground (AOG) and is not delivering revenue to the airline, and that their service level agreement (SLA) forces a direct penalty because of the delay. The tier one parts supplier is worried their demand plan is missing AOG events and the "next" spare will be in the wrong place or late.
Aircraft Decommissioning (52 Weeks of SkyThread: Week 10) — Chuck Marx
What happens at the end of an aircraft life? Two Boeing 787 are about the find out. The global commercial aircraft disassembly, dismantling & recycling market was estimated to be worth $4.5 billion in 2019 by Fortune Business Insights and is projected to reach $5.4 billion by 2027, a CAGR of 7.4% (1) More than 16,000 commercial aircraft have been retired worldwide in the past 35 years, and more recently, some 700 aircraft per year are reaching the end of their operational lives. Over the next 10 years, craft retirements are expected to increase as COVID-19 accelerated fleet retirements.
Improving Aviation Sustainability (52 Weeks of SkyThread: Week 9) — Mark Roboff
At SkyThread, we talk extensively about the benefits of part track and trace to our customers’ bottom line. Going back to what our Chief Strategy Officer, Chuck Marx, first articulated in Data for the Life of the Aircraft, we envision an industry data network supplying full and trusted visibility to any and every part’s history as providing more than $30B in yearly operational savings to the commercial aviation industry. There are indeed several vectors that contribute to this overall number, and the SkyThread team has done extensive work building a top down and bottoms up analysis to validate these savings. However, one vector animates me more than any other, and that’s track and trace’s impact to supply chain visibility.
Aircraft on Ground (52 Weeks of SkyThread: Week 8) — Chuck Marx
“Ladies and Gentlemen, this flight has been cancelled.” Not at all what you want to hear when you’re trying to get to a business meeting, going on vacation, or trying to get home to your family. AOG causes include weather, crew, airport congestion and maintenance. Let’s talk about maintenance. When a plane is tagged as “Aircraft on Ground” (AOG), the conditions causing it may be known and we’re just waiting for a part, or it’s not known, and into the hangar we go to inspect the plane and determine the issue. The costs to an airline for AOG are very high. There are many studies on this topic, but Boeing estimates that a 1-2 hour AOG will cost an airline $10,000-20,000, and possibly as high as $150,000. With an average of 14 AOG’s per aircraft per year in the US, this cost adds up quickly. The industry spends over $30 billion a year dealing with irregular operations such as AOG.
U.S. Air Force Leads the Way with Blockchain (52 Weeks of SkyThread: Week 7) — Chuck Marx
You’ve heard the phrase popularized by President John F. Kennedy – “a rising tide lifts all boats” – It applies in the commercialization of advanced technologies in a large way. NASA has been a pioneer in the support for commercialization of its innovations developed within the US space program for quite some time. Some of the things we take for granted today were developed in that manner, such as artificial limbs, aircraft anti-icing systems, correcting for GPS signal errors, OpenStack, powdered lubricant, scratch-resistant lenses, solar cells, and structural analysis software. NASA and other research funding programs within the US defense industry have been involved in over 2,000 commercialization efforts of technology designed within the space and defense programs...
Global Parts Registry — It’s Time (52 Weeks of SkyThread: Week 6) — Chuck Marx
Aircraft are registered, aircraft parts are not. We do understand that the regulations at the part level are carefully crafted “to be sure” that the collection of 3,500 parts that fly together in what we call “an airplane” are airworthy. And for the most part, the outcomes are achieved. But the inefficiency, waste and delay are tremendous. We’ve been talking about strengthening the aircraft part authentication process for well over 25 years. Including requiring “back to birth” reporting on aircraft parts. But …
Clear Skies Ahead? (52 Weeks of SkyThread: Week 5) — Chuck Marx
I’ve been in this industry for over 40 years now. Over 5 million miles flown. Just after I began my career, the DC-9 was heading into retirement after a production run of 1,000 aircraft. 1982 was “pre-personal computers, pre-internet and of course, pre-tablets”. It was a simpler time. But ironically, the systems we built and use today to handle the complicated routines of aircraft engineering and maintenance are largely “of that era”. Sure, the modernization has begun. But the industry is still largely driven by paper-based processes and manual entry, and re-entry, and re-entry. The inefficiency, waste and delays are large, and the errors and inconsistency of the end-product are “high”.
Keeping Planes Flying (52 Weeks of SkyThread: Week 4) — Chuck Marx
The tapestry of systems required to keep our planes flying safely is remarkable. I’ve supported many airline mergers and systems implementations and integration over my career. There are at least 20 systems within an airline that “send and receive” information about aircraft parts and planes so that the right part is sent to the right plane at the right time in the right place and installed by the right people. We call that - “Planes, People, Parts, and Places”
Aircraft Part Lifecycles (52 Weeks of SkyThread: Week 3) — Chuck Marx
To ensure safe and efficient operations, airlines, suppliers, and MRO providers go to extreme lengths to validate that components, engines, and aircraft have been maintained at the desired levels. Important but inefficient efforts delay part acceptance, create excessive safety stocks, and require significant forensics labor to document part status. This is resolved by employing a curated, blockchain data network for parts, components, and complex assemblies up to and including the aircraft itself.
Blockchain Lessons Learned (52 Weeks of SkyThread: Week 2) — Chuck Marx
Last week I launched my "52 week" blog on what we call "Data for the Life of the Aircraft". In the comments to my post last week, I included some history on how we got here. Where is "here"? An industry that despite its customer service successes, is reeling in old systems, disparate data, huge inefficiencies, high levels of inventory and many penalties for missed performance.
SkyThread for Parts (TM) (52 Weeks of SkyThread: Week 1) — Chuck Marx
Blockchain for Aviation assets will see real progress this year. I’ve been building towards this vision over the past 20 years and have supported the commercial and defense aviation industry for over 40 years. Why in 2023? Gartner has placed blockchain into the “Slope of Enlightenment”. It’s taken about 10 years to arrive here, having gone through the “Trough of Disillusionment”, the “Peak of Inflated Expectations” and the Innovation Trigger”.