Aircraft Parts Lifecycle
Chasing and Validating the Parts
By Chuck Marx, SkyThread Chief Strategy Officer
Note: this post is part of a 52-week series Chuck is posting about digital aviation. This post is Week 3.
SkyThread’s blockchain enabled, trusted data network improves the quality of data on commercial aviation aircraft parts, aircraft, and engine events, unleashing some $30 billion in value. 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.
“Aircraft Parts Management contributes to the success and cost structure of airline operations.”
Data for the Life of the Aircraft - The gauntlet that aircraft, engines, and parts move through over the life of the asset create many opportunities to create errors, lose important data and worse, fabricate data. It also gives us the opportunity to collect and validate information. Because of the industry awareness and importance of data accuracy current processes often creates doubt about how assets have been operated and maintained. SkyThread delivers validation and trust so that operators need not worry about a part, assembly engine or aircraft’s lineage. And the information coming back to the Tier 1 parts makers and component repair shops reduces the costs required to keep the parts serviceable.
We’ve been involved in over hundreds of meetings on this topic over the past 5 years. Whitepapers supporting the concept have been published by the Aerospace Industries Association, Airbus SATAIR, Honeywell Aerospace, Air France Industries, AWS, SITA, Boeing, PwC, Deloitte, Strategy&, Accenture, and many others. But of course, actions are what count. We’re seeing some movement now with the formation of about a dozen companies that are developing data sharing use cases, both with and without blockchain. This is good. It begins the journey of bringing our “manually intensive” industry into the digital era – “part by part”.
There are 100 million parts in the ecosystem today that will be recorded in a shared, distributed network. Remember, these parts have a life of their own regardless of who has “custody” of them at this moment. Over a dozen companies will “engage” with a specific aircraft part over its long life. Some 60 million parts are flying today. But, having worked on many airline mergers and systems migrations, we know the level of work that goes establishing and maintaining part histories. Collectively, we have some 40 million parts in various “status” around the world “on the ground”. It will benefit the entire ecosystem to know the “non-commercial” status of each of these staged parts to improve the industries’ spare parts planning processes – from Tier 1 parts OEM through the brokers and airlines.
We’ve launched SkyThread for Parts, which allows this data sharing process to begin, at the ecosystem level. We’re capturing and validating data about aircraft parts from their original manufacturing date through the scrap or recycling of the part. If we only tackled one use case, such as parts removed on the line or in the hangar during an aircraft’s operations, we may only “see” 130 parts per tail per year. When the replacement part is received by the airline, nothing more is known about the life of that part if we had not been preparing for that “receipt”. But we are preparing.
Why Blockchain?
Blockchain is the most adaptable technology to combine the techniques we’ll deploy to find the parts, determine their original authenticity, and begin closing the gaps on the “back to birth” record of the part. Once we’ve established the part in the chain, we’ve activated a “self-healing network” to maintain and validate that parts’ history.
Historical “look back” with the major Tier 1 OEMs to record original aircraft and engine part birth
Current look into the serialization of all planes flying today to “snap the line” on which parts are “in the air”
Current look into the inventories “on the ground” to establish part provenance
Historical “look back” into the repair cycles of existing parts to close the information gaps
Turn on – recording of new part registration
Turn on – recording of serialization of parts on new aircraft and engines
Turn on – recording of MRO events (with partners tracking individual companies)
Turn on – recording of aircraft, engine, and parts decommissioning events
Turn on – recording of serialization tracking on lease originations and returns
Turn on – validation of hours and cycles to enable decision making on part repairs and use
Every company that “touches” a part is engaged in receiving and updating the story of that part.
Business Value
All the whitepapers are eloquent in their enumeration of the values to be unleashed. We’ve been monitoring the successes and the lessons learned over the past 5 years to refine the approaches to be contemporary and realistic. SkyThread provides the friction free data platform and solutions that:
Register aircraft parts at birth and follow them through their life journey. Part authentication and visibility = part value
Validate the movement and condition of aircraft parts on and off aircraft and through maintenance events
Lower aircraft part risks (UAP) and inventory levels through validation of part life events, provenance, and scrap
Increase aircraft, engine, and part residual value and availability, reduce maintenance costs, lower inventories, and TAT
Validating the “as flown” configuration of the aircraft - facilitating return on lease, sale, and heavy maintenance events
Improving the difficult aircraft parts spares planning processes – “history” has proven to be a weak driver of spares demand
Reduces (or eliminates) the ability for parts to work their way back into the supply chain after being deemed “end of life”
Ecosystem Engagement
Most industry IT, process and data efforts today focus on a fraction of the value chain, creating silos that stifle information flow and value creation. Organizations create these silos due to a lack of trust of the data of others in the ecosystem. By engaging with all the actors in the aerospace ecosystem, SkyThread for Parts, creates the trust needed, eliminating data and process friction. The parts lifecycle parallels the aircraft and engine lifecycle which we’re building now. Systems align within the enterprise between PLM, ERP, MRO, MIS, EDI, AHM, Cycles and Analytics – working with your integrators
Architecture and Implementation
SkyThread is an independent Solution as a Service (SaaS) built using blockchain. The SkyThread Data Layer is a master data “chain of chains” to embrace and engage stand-alone solutions that create industry value for “all” digital solutions, including ours. The solution is best integrated to the MRO, ERP and EDI systems for maximum value and aligns with airframe and engine lifecycle solutions. We plan to engage all parts and all planes over the next aircraft event cycles.
Data Credits
SkyThread has developed the mechanisms to monetize the sharing of non-confidential data – A sizable portion of the SaaS revenues generated through data views are distributed to the contributors of the validated data into the parts ecosystem. We recognize that data ownership and confidentiality of the data is important in today’s world. We develop the channel mechanisms to share the data with relevant actors without impacting the ownership of the data.
How to Begin?
Every company has their own ecosystem.
An Airline with its MRO network, Tier 1 supplier, and brokers
An MRO with its primary airline, its component repair shops and other airlines
A Tier 1 OEM with its airframe customers, brokers, MRO repair centers and airlines relying on spares
Rotable pools with their airline customers and Tier 1 supply partners
An engine company, with its full ecosystem
An airframer with its AHM and FHS commitments
A lessor with its aircraft and engines under lease
We call these clusters. And of course, at the part level, parts move between these clusters and often sit outside the cluster until they are needed. We’re engaging at the cluster level, not at an individual company level to encourage “learnings” around data sharing and the value it unleashes.
You can reach us at info@skythread.aero