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Boeing and Fujitsu are partnering to offer
comprehensive automated identification technology (AIT) packages for
retrofit on commercial aircraft — any manufacturer and any type. The
first application should launch in the second quarter of 2012. This could
have a major impact on the aftermarket, and very few people in the
industry saw this coming. Boeing originally planned to include radio
frequency identification (RFID) on its first 787, as did Airbus on its
A380, but neither effort, despite their early collaboration, worked as
originally envisioned.
Boeing’s Phil Coop, program manager for
the new Boeing AIT business, told Aviation Week that airlines understood
the RFID benefits from Boeing’s earlier efforts, but found it too
cumbersome to make all of the pieces work together. Airlines also didn’t
want AIT solely on new 787s. Program delays prompted Boeing to refocus on
getting the Dreamliner to market without RFID while developing a complete
AIT package for the existing fleet.
The partners’ one-stop-shop approach aims
to take the complexity out of purchasing, implementing and managing the
system. They provide everything — tags, readers, software, middleware,
application software, data integration, training, validation and
performance guarantees — to the operator. Fujitsu will work with other
AIT suppliers, including MacSema for contact memory buttons and
various RFID reader suppliers, such as Intermec, to create the bundled
offering because no one in the RFID industry can provide end-to-end
solutions on its own, says Toshiya Sato, Fujistsu’s general manager of
AIT.
Boeing will offer five standard solutions
initially: emergency equipment management (for items such as oxygen
generators, life jackets and all airborne emergency equipment), rotable
management (for systems such as starter generators and APUs), structural
rotables (including fuselage doors, flaps and landing gear doors),
repairables management (for non-serialized parts), and structural repairs
and airframe degradation management (to monitor corrosion control and
prevention programs, RVSM aerodynamics, for instance).
Boeing is talking with an airline about
being its launch customer and development partner.
The program’s first phase will validate
processes and procedures, as well as the value proposition, and should
finish in April, says Coop. The second phase involves static and
performance testing via temporary retrofits and should conclude in July.
Proof of concept on an in-service airplane and a global pilot round out
the third phase and should wrap up in the first quarter 2012, says Coop.
Boeing plans to offer the emergency equipment solution in the second
quarter of 2012.
Coop says "a typical customer that
operates a fleet of 40 Boeing 777s and invests $200,000-$250,000 in
tagging life jackets alone could save $1 million per year alone in
labor." |
