Foundation of data

AMAugust19Feature - airbus1
AMAugust19Feature - airbus1

Airbus is connecting its software platforms, old and new, to create a data collection and analysis system that drives continuous improvement within the European giant and beyond to its supplier base and airline customers. Rob Coppinger reports. 

Airbus is connecting its software platforms, old and new, to create a data collection and analysis system that drives continuous improvement within the European giant and beyond to its supplier base and airline customers. Rob Coppinger reports.

 

A data lake fed by Airbus, its suppliers and airline customers are to be the backbone for all the improvement efforts in design, development, manufacturing and servicing that the European aerospace firm will carry out in future. Called Digital Design Manufacturing and Services (DDMS) it includes existing software such as enterprise resource planning, product data management and what Airbus calls its manufacturing execution system and its more recent, Skywise platform. Airbus launched Skywise to a handful of internal and external users a few years ago and is now expanding its use.

With DDMS, a goal is to co-design the product and production system simultaneously with the help of that data lake backbone.

“What we are putting in place is the mastering of the execution not only internal to Airbus, but really in the complete ecosystem of Airbus and our partners,” says Airbus senior vice-president Alain Tropis, who oversees the digital design manufacturing and services project. The digital co-design of product and factory is expected to deliver a faultless manufacturing process, leading to higher rates of production early on and quicker deliveries for an aircraft programme.

“We'll capture some data from all the execution systems,” Tropis says, referring to the manufacturing system and all the other core business functions that carry out and execute what is necessary for the business to deliver its products. We will capture this information from the different systems and combine them in a single environment to be able to connect data.”

The datalake is expected to create digital twins for products and factories and the manufacture of an aircraft would be modelled in detail to ensure production started without any problems

Airbus is not building the entire DDMS and then turning a switch for an overnight changeover; instead various parts of the DDMS are already in place and slowly it is all being brought together for that data lake.

“We have perhaps six or seven [DDMS] demonstrator [projects],” Tropis explains. One demonstrator he describes is for an engine nacelle and that project is focused on production with the involvement of the shopfloor staff. Another demonstrator project is ongoing at Airbus’ Hamburg site, and its hangar 245 where it builds its single aisle models. “We are already implementing [DDMS] at the shopfloor level to really get the buy-in [by staff], demonstrating the value to their work on their ergonomics,” Tropis says. And shopfloor operators are also being proactive in their engagement with the DDMS demonstrators.

The A350 EXtra Wide Body model is another area where DDMS demonstrator projects have been underway. Again, this involves the shopfloor. “We are deploying [DDMS for] the A350 between engineering work orders and the way we are iterating with the shopfloor to make more efficiencies at shopfloor level.” The introduction of new automation will also be planned through DDMS, to try to implement robotics to help manufacturing, without having a large shopfloor footprint. Another new part of Airbus’ approach to manufacturing is its use of its Skywise platform, which it deploys for its factories’ quality management.

Skywise is a platform that is the point of access for airlines, lessors, maintenance repair organisations, suppliers and regulators within the DDMS data eco-system Airbus is developing. Airbus has created a worldwide infrastructure with telecoms partners for the collation of data from its customers that it says is secure and reliable for Skywise. This digital platform has more than 70 airlines and 6,000 aircraft, along with Airbus users and 10,000 users of Skywise every month. The US carrier Allegiant Air told Airbus that Skywise stops one aircraft-on-ground event every day.

Airbus Helicopters and the company’s defence and space division are also undertaking DDMS projects. Tropis also cites more, “ambitious,” projects that are taking place in Airbus’ research and technology (R&T) activities. “We try to be much more innovative with what we are testing because, by definition, we are in R&T. We can push the limit of the system more,” he explains. Airbus’ investments in this digital co-operative future include the Internet of Things (IoT). Tropis explains that on some of Airbus’ sites, IoT devices are providing a feedback loop for manufacturing analytics to improve the shopfloor operational performance.

The collection of data from the shopfloor and the use of Internet of Things technology means an exact copy of production machinery can be created and these virtual machines can be programmed

Bringing its suppliers with it on this journey to build DDMS up into an enterprise wide system is important to Airbus. “We need to ensure that we are designing and interacting in the co-development mode between Airbus and its partners,” Tropis says. Airbus will not be specifying particular software platforms for suppliers to use. Instead, Airbus will use Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs, which allows dissimilar software to share data. “We'll agree on the APIs and data exchange to get these data exchanges,” he adds.

Security is going to be important for these data exchanges. “Cybersecurity is a key parameter in the design [of DDMS],” says Tropis. “Today, we are customising a Cloud approach to be sure that we embed all the security that we want to put in place.” Airbus is examining how to use the cloud whether to outsource the Cloud or to have its own Cloud datacentres.

Cybersecurity is an important issue because Airbus has military projects as well as civil ones. “Tomorrow, we will exchange, and we'll share a lot of data, so the continuity of the data will be key. To ensure that the continuity of the data is really powerful, we need to ensure the cybersecurity of the data between Airbus, the partner, and the airlines,” he adds.

Shopfloor projects, IoT devices sending back data from the factory, the modelling of the machine tools and other equipment to create a virtual copies, like a product’s digital twin; and not only of Airbus’ finished product and operations, but of the suppliers – this digital extended enterprise aims to fully harness the potential of data as an agent of change from the very beginning of an aerospace component to airlines’ own operations.

www.airbus.com

Images courtesy of Airbus

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Airbus

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