Covering Disruptive Technology Powering Business in The Digital Age

General Electric has set out to become the world’s Digital Industrial Company, transforming itself by using Big Data to shape everything from the way it makes things to supporting customers in the field.

“Big Data is transforming our business,” says Kevin McAllister, president and CEO of GE Aviation Services. “To my knowledge GE is the only company to invest in data analytics to match its industrial scale.”

Investment in GE Digital, the companywide center for Big Data, will total US$1.4 billion this year, giving business units access to 1,100 data scientists whose job it is to help derive new data-based products.

Working under the umbrella Predix, they make sense out of huge amounts of data, and bring new insights into products and services. “Scale doesn’t work if you have only five people (in a back room)” or farm out data analysis to outsiders, says McAllister. “Now we can combine our depth of aviation product knowledge with our rapidly growing digital capabilities. This marriage of physics and analytics is delivering better customer outcomes faster than ever before.”

For GE Aviation this amounts to personal healthcare for the 35,000 engines it has in the field. For its customers it moves engine care and maintenance into the world of prediction, not only by fleet but engine-by-engine, and even by individual components.

Earlier this year GE Aviation Services rolled out TrueChoice, a broad suite of engine maintenance offerings for the commercial aviation industry with the ability to customize data analytics and service options for the needs of individual customers.

TrueChoice Flight Hour brings customized offerings that help optimize cost of ownership over the entire lifecycle with flexible risk transfer and payment options;

True Choice Overhaul tailors time and material workscopes specific to shop visit objectives, economic priorities and ownership horizons, whether for one engine or an entire fleet;

TrueChoice Material determines the right mix of new, used and repaired parts, and helps determine technology upgrades for airlines and MROs that enhance engine performance over the lifecycle and support higher engine residual value;

TrueChoice Transitions analyzes a broad range of options for changing ownership horizons, including green time leases, exchanges and material buy-back, plus custom workscopes with shorter builds and maximum used material.

Different airlines and leasing companies have different cost and life cycle objectives for the engines, and these tools help them toward those goals, explains McAllister.

“50,000 aircraft will change hands over the next decade. That’s 4,300 a year.

We can be a key partner in transactions and help fleet planning objectives for used aircraft around the world.”

TrueChoice has operational implications, too.

For example, in comparing shop visit data of a particular airline’s engines to the fleet, GE Aviation was able to determine that the airline typically used higher thrust settings than most when taking off in hot-and-high conditions. This operating practice was causing unnecessary stress to turbine blades, leading to their premature replacement. Now the airline has changed its procedures and the parts are lasting longer.

McAllister explained that data analysis showed this was an airline-specific issue, and there was no need to inspect or replace similar parts throughout the fleet.

One size doesn’t fit all. “We live in a world of tremendous variations: the environment can be hot or 50-degrees below, sandy, salty, or dusty, and operations can range from long to short flights, slow or fast climb, hot-and-high takeoffs. We have an abundance of data: 35,000 engines talking to us, as well as airline operators and service shops. Lots of engines, big scale, and lots of variation.

“Analytics gives us insights we wouldn’t otherwise see, and finds correlations we were never looking for,” says McAllister.

“Predictive analytics is a huge game-changer as can now offer personalized medicine by individual engine.”

New Products

A new software application called Flight Phase Analyzer is enabling customers who provide continuous engine operating data to access the power of GE’s Predix analytics platform to gain new insight into optimizing their flight operations.

The Water Wash Optimizer application details the significant time-on-wing gains that can be achieved through effective water wash and offers tools to optimize the procedure for maximum fuel savings.

It delivers fleet-wide and engine-level views of engine operating parameters before and after engine water wash, making it easy to see the amount of exhaust gas temperature recovery achieved from the procedure. It also provides a fuel savings scenario planner to customize wash procedures for maximum fuel savings.

This article was originally published on www.aviationweek.com and can be viewed in full

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