Industry Insight Special Report
Getting to the heart of the engine
June 1st 2017
Engine manufacturer and MRO, Pratt & Whitney, has developed a software tool, EngineWise, that uses Big Data collection to forecast and improve maintenance across all its commercial aviation product family. Read More »
EngineWise , said Pratt & Whitney’s executive director, Asia Pacific, Kevin Kirkpatrick, provides constant monitoring of engines produced by the Pratt & Whitney parent as well as Pratt & Whitney Canada and International Aero Engines.
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| 'If you went back twenty years and looked at the data you could not do anything with it. The computing power was not there. The storage was not there. But now it is. This is a tremendous opportunity, not only for airline cost management, but passenger satisfaction. We are pulling that data today and it’s allowing us to predict engine behavior to the benefit of every customer' |
| Kevin Kirkpatrick Pratt & Whitney’s executive director, Asia Pacific |
It is about real time intelligence that will predict and prevent engine disruptions before they occur, said Kirkpatrick.
“If we can harness that, and we have shown that we can, it drives down costs and allows us to better predict maintenance and allows airline to plan downtime. It helps allocate shop visit space more efficient and improve planning at our facilities,” he said.
“In the past, there would be snapshots, but these snapshots would only be of a handful of parameters. Now, we capture the full flight cycle. Now we are going to be looking at constant monitoring of literally hundreds of parameters.
Kirkpatrick will be offering EngineWise to Asia-Pacific carriers in a region where the Connecticut-headquartered OEM has invested millions in its service hub in Singapore and separate facilities in China, Taiwan and New Zealand.
Large numbers of new A320s and A321neo aircraft, equipped with Pratt & Whitney geared turbofan (GTF) engines, have been ordered by the region’s airlines.
“The aftermarket business in Asia is very healthy. We are going to add a V2500 facility in Shanghai. We need to make sure we keep up and support our customers. We are going to be in airlines where traditionally Pratt has not been because the GTF is doing well,” he said.
“We have been hiring and expanding the network that we provide customers. We are going to be everywhere as it relates to support for customers. “You will see more investments announced this year and subsequent years to support that GTF engine. I can’t give details but yes, you will see that in the near future.”
The GTF engines are collecting data from day one of entry into service and Pratt is collecting and astounding 5,000 parameters from each engine. It predicts 11 total petabytes (PB) of data will be generated across the fleet by the time it reaches maturity in 2030 and, at maturity, the GTF engine fleet will generate more than 2 petabytes of data annually, equivalent to a new American Library of Congress every year.
Among the investments already made in Asia is the introduction of new coating technology at the OEM’s Component Solutions facility in Singapore. Known as 279/284 coating, it allows for the application of two protective coatings on engine parts at the same time which adds assurance to the engine’s optimal performance.
It is the first of the OEM’s units outside the U.S. to offer the technology which reduces logistics and shipping costs for the region’s airlines and turns around the process to six days.
Pratt can now digitize its engines and allow the airline customer to see inside an engine. “But I’m going to take it one step beyond that,” said Kirkpatrick.
“Once you start to digitize the workings of an engine, you can take digital images of other engines and look for non-conformances. Computer power allows analysis of the good versus a bad part in that digitalization.
“It provides enhanced inspection techniques where the computer is helping you do that inspection. It is a little far into the future but we are experimenting with things like that today,” he said.
