Commercial aviation in a digital world a cyberphysical systems approach for innovative maintenance

摘要

The digital economy is becoming more evident and is redefining customer expectations by bringing innovation not only for everyday life, but also, facilitating the way people work. Movements among different industries are directed through a transformation provided by new technologies such as augmented reality, cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), big data, internet of things (IoT), and others. Digital innovations have been reshaping businesses by disrupting existing processes and operating models. One sector that has been embracing digital transformation is the commercial airlines segment. The aviation industry has been investing heavily in technology since its inception. These investments have primarily been driven on the manufacturing side of the industry. Not only must the product digitally evolve, so to must the back office of commercial airlines. Aircraft maintenance is an essential branch for commercial airlines that must renew and adapt to be more efficient, provide greater reliability, reduce costs, and increase availability of the aircraft for revenue service. In this study, the digital transformation brings two key words. The word cyber, as it stands for highly potent mix of digital computing, storage, software, and data networking. Moreover, the word “physical” standing for the entire physical world around as the aircraft systems, people and environment. Therefore, the proposal is to depict today’s heavy maintenance process and propose three pictures, aided by cyber-physical systems, which will digitally transform the heavy maintenance process to reduce aircraft downtime in the short, medium and long-term. In order to do so, a proposal of incremental and disruptive innovations will be presented in the context of maintenance management and processes.