This Plane is on the Chain - or is it?
The blockchain journey has begun!
Boeing announced the launch of its new wide-body aircraft, the Boeing 787 aircraft, 20 years ago on January 29, 2003. Back then, I was just beginning a 6-year journey leading the implementation of SAP for the newly merged Honeywell Aerospace and Allied Signal, key suppliers to all Boeing platforms.? It was during that work I began to formulate the vision for what we call “Data for the Life of the Aircraft”.? A tagline and vision that just could NOT be implemented in any way due to the competing nature of the industrial actors around the sharing of aircraft parts data and the low level of data sharing technology available.? It was reinforced by my work on the “below the wing” merger of United and Continental Airlines in Sceptre.
With the emergence of blockchain over the past 8 years, technology has finally caught up with this business vision. The regulators and industry trade associations like ASA have been tinkering with the notion of enabling “back to birth” tracking for aircraft parts since 1998, but achieving the vision has been elusive.? For the past three years, SkyThread has been working across the industry to build consensus around the business issues, framing the opportunity and building the technology stack that would enable the “trusted” sharing of “validated” non-confidential information about the history of a part.
Our first industry cluster has been formed and centers around rotable parts for the B787 aircraft.? The cluster leader supports pool programs for 20 airlines with over 200 B787 aircraft.? This will “post” the first 700,000 aircraft parts on the blockchain.? From this base, we will support all the Tier 1 parts makers in recording the original birth records for their aircraft parts flying today.? These parts makers have produced over 3.7 million aircraft parts for the 787 platform over the past 20 years.? And they deployed another 1 million parts into the spares market to support planned and unplanned maintenance activities. Parker Aerospace has recorded the birth records into the SkyThread blockchain for all its B787 parts manufactured for the aircraft platform.
Eight years after the launch of the program, ANA received their first aircraft as the launch customer.? Since that day, 85 airlines have ordered over 1,900 aircraft.? After our launch of the 787 rotable pool on the blockchain, we will recruit and onboard the industry actors, including MRO facilities, that are responsible for keeping these aircraft “mission ready”.
Three aircraft have now made their way into the decommission hangars.? This will deposit over 10,000 “as removed” aircraft parts into the USM markets. SkyThread can follow these aircraft into the hangar and follow the individual parts off the plane and into the USM market, or recycling / scrap.
Recruiting Industry Actors Now!
If you have a role in sourcing, acquiring, receiving, repairing, distributing, removing, or installing serialized aircraft parts, let’s talk.
Over the past 12 years, the 787 platform has gone through its teenage years and parts are moving to “steady state” from a reliability standpoint. They are also now being removed from their initial aircraft during heavy checks. Spare planning will improve, but today’s parts supply chains are challenged”. Anything we can do to help find “the right part, in the right condition, for the right plane in the right place at the right time” will be appreciated. ??During these past 20 years, many maintenance activities have been completed, but we have low levels of validated documentation on the cumulative repairs completed by part #.? ?
SkyThread is recruiting MRO hangars and Part 145 repair stations who have maintained these parts and planes to join the chain. The non-confidential repair parameters for each part will be collected and posted to the permissioned blockchain.
SkyThread is recruiting distributors to record the new and USM parts in their inventories – not to interfere with the sales process for these parts, but to provide validation and verification of the authenticity of parts where all we have “with the part”, is the latest 8130 tag for that part.? SkyThread is not a parts re-seller or marketplace.
SkyThread is recruiting aircraft and asset decommissioning centers to support the tracking of inbound parts on their aircraft or assets and enable the “data sharing” of parts coming off the aircraft / asset that will move into the USM markets.? We have been attending the ASA / AFRA conferences to continue the dialogue.
What about Engines, Landing Systems and APU’s?
They are in scope. Remember the AOG Technics fraud was perpetuated on engine parts? That series of events have led to the formation of the ASCIC Industry Coalition writing a report on how things should change.? The actors in that study include Boeing, Airbus, GE, Safran, United Airlines, Delta Airlines, American Airlines and Standard Aero.
We’ve been working with a large industry actor to frame the engine configuration lifecycle management track and trace capabilities. This proof of concept is underway with 3 large industry actors, including a major airline MRO provider. We are engaged at some level now with 3 major MRO service providers. Discussions are underway with both Landing Systems providers and APU service providers.
What Happens to Parts in the Chain?
We’ve built the lifecycle of an aircraft part into the blockchain. We’re tracking the “events” a part travels through over its life and recording the data for those events on the chain. This is a permissioned data network, so if you are a relevant actor to the data in question, the provider of the data will provide “permission” for your use. This is delivered through the security in the chain.?? This is NOT a replacement for ERP or MRO systems.? We “give and get” data to and from those systems to make them better.? They can’t see what they can’t see.
An important point – while the contributor of the part data “owns” the data, we attribute the data to “the part” in the ledger to provide visibility to that data when the part changes ownership, status, or condition. This is a key change to how the world works today, where the recipient of the part can usually only see those activities on that part since its last install.? Complex assets have better traceability, but still contain gaps, errors, unvalidated data, and lots and lots of paper in bankers’ boxes.
The sum of the parts equals a plane.?
You remember the adage – a plane is a million parts flying in common formation”.? Today, the 787 is a flying computer and it “talks to us” as it’s flying.? While we are not here to compete with the airframer and analytics firms trying to intercept and interpret this operating data, we’ll be capturing other information from the aircraft, such as hours and cycles, which are critical to the spares planning, reliability analysis and early removal analysis.? We’ll be applying this information to the complex assemblies on the aircraft and the individual parts within that asset and the plane itself.? We’re building the blockchain from the “bottom up” at the parts level, and from the “top down” capturing parts on wing today.
Supporting Aircraft Lifecycle Events
The Boeing 787 aircraft leases have begun expiring, heavy checks have begun and yes, three 787 aircraft have moved into aircraft decommissioning to be parted out.
Having the validated parts lists with serialization of the aircraft and engines “ready” at major aircraft events will significantly reduce the time it takes to complete an aircraft or asset event, and the associated costs.? Today this is a time consuming and expensive process.? Millions of dollars. These planes and engines need to be “in service”.? So, any activities that reduce their earnings potential (revenue) are a significant drain on the ROIC on these assets. ??
Knowing which parts need to be removed and replaced and knowing the remaining lives of other parts have a big impact on the realization of value during the aircraft or engine event. Knowing the life history of a part will affect its realization in the USM market by a large amount.
Aviation Blockchain is Here
SkyThread was formed in 2021 by senior industry executives to “solve” for these important safety, aircraft availability and economic issues.? The industry has been experimenting with blockchain for the past 8 years.? This cycle of “Proof of Concepts” has laid down a pretty good path towards what will work and where challenges remain.? But we’re now beyond “concepts” and driving for sustainable value.? The solutions we’re building look good.
领英推荐
The outcome?? Over the next aircraft lifecycle, we, as an industry, will have validated and authenticated the location (on wing / off wing) and status of all the serialized parts that keep our fleets flying and / or mission ready. Note that we’re working with the industry leading Independent Data Consortium for Aviation (IDCA) to build consensus around this vision and mission - see Independent Data Consortium for Aviation.
How is the data validated?
The system uses data triangulation to support part research, looking for gaps and overlaps in the part life data and flags those “gap” events in the chain as the parts move between actors over the part’s life.? Remember when planes were located by altitude, direction and thrust? Now being replaced by GPS and ADS-B.? It’s the same for our aircraft parts data, where we can now track available parts based on location, status and condition using mobile devices. ?Call us to talk about how “validation” would work for you and benefit your operations.
We’ve been publishing an article series on this journey.? Here are the links to the articles.?
Aircraft on Ground (AOG)
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President at Technology Solutions and Aviation RFID Evangelist
6 个月25 years ago, Ken Porad, a Boeing engineer, and I had a meeting with the the FAA's Associate Administrator to seek their support and 'encouragement' (we weren't asking for new reg!) to help move the industry toward digital data on parts. Back then, and still now, that would be barcoded data plates as specified by ATA Spec2000. Getting OEMs to add barcodes to their data plates doesn't require any re-certification as the form, fit and function of the part doesn't change. The FAA refused and here we are 25 years later still having the same problems of bad data in our systems. While others are starting with existing-undoubtedly fat-fingered-data, I am working to get the digital data on parts down to the mechanics who are the ones collecting all the data. We've made excellent progress with companies like Safran tagging every life vest and slide they produce. Lots of other emergency equipment in the cabin is also tagged. And we're just starting with other critical, serialized parts outside the cabin to put barcode/RFID tags on them. This is being done by airlines because the OEMs have not stepped up to the plate on this. It would such a trivial change by the OEMs and have such a huge impact across the industry. Comments? Help?
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6 个月Makes you wonder what spec the ones that aren't on the chain actually comply with. As an old Crew Chief (F-4, F-16), you just gave me one more thing to worry about:(
Territory Management
6 个月Two critical recommendations that I hope we see from the ASCIC report will be 1) a push to digitize the "birth records" and all follow-on records of all new parts and 2) the creation of a secure and globally accessible way to access these records. The building blocks are there - and they are already approved by the regulators.