物聯網在引擎預防保養的應用

Microsoft Customer Stories, Rolls-Royce and Microsoft collaborate to create new digital capabilities, 2016/4/27

Worldwide, flight delays and disruptions cost the airline industry millions of dollars every year. Even a small reduction in “aircraft on ground” (AOG) time can translate into significant amount of money, so airlines are always looking for ways to improve the efficiency of maintenance activities.

The same applies to fuel costs. Fuel generally accounts for a whopping 40 percent of airlines’ operating expenses. Even a 1 percent optimization of fuel consumption can save an airline millions of dollars annually. A lot of factors affect how much fuel is consumed on a flight, including the flight path selected, weather, engine efficiency, and operational choices such as how much fuel to carry on each flight. The heavier the fuel load, the more fuel the aircraft will burn. A clean engine burns less fuel, but washing engines is time consuming and expensive. Determining when the optimum time is for each of the engines in a fleet to get washed requires the analysis of a lot of data. 

In fact, all the choices that affect operating costs and efficiency across an airline require an enormous amount of data analysis, but sorting out which information matters is becoming more difficult as technological advances unleash a rapidly increasing barrage of data. An engine 15 years ago had very few sensors and generated a small amount of signals and data. Today, each engine has many sensors and generates thousands of signals, with a corresponding increase in the number of data points produced. As a leading provider of aviation engine services, Rolls-Royce examined these growing data analysis challenges and emerged with a plan to address the changing market with a more compelling set of services to meet the broader needs of the marketplace.... 

In expanding the scope of services Rolls-Royce offers its customers, fuel efficiency is one of the first and highest-yield areas that the company is targeting. By analyzing new data against existing forecasts, reference tables, and historical trends, Rolls-Royce will be able to help airlines understand exactly which factors—including flight plans, equipment maintenance, weather, and discretionary fuel—have the most impact on fuel performance. “By blending all these data sets, we can provide more targeted and actionable insights at the point of need to inform the decisions that optimize how the airlines go about doing business,” says Chester.

了解關鍵的管理流程和問題，利用最新的資料收集和分析工具，不僅可以提高公司利潤，也形成難以仿製的競爭優勢。