Dimensionality reduction application of aviation system operation and maintenance brain
Boeing and Airbus have fully utilized SEP...
Text | Guo Renxian
Under the wave of industrial digitalization, how to effectively accumulate big data throughout the life cycle of equipment and build targeted artificial intelligence technology applications to improve operation and maintenance support services has become an important development direction for intelligent equipment.
This is especially important for the aviation industry, which regards safety as its "lifeline".
As the world's largest aircraft manufacturer, Boeing has industry-leading digital capabilities. The amount of data generated by their Boeing-787 Dreamliner during a single flight is as high as TB level. If we look at it over the entire year, this amount of data is even larger. Boeing can still maintain its leading digital capabilities while processing massive amounts of data, so how does their digital operation and maintenance support work throughout the life cycle proceed?
In China, there is such a company, Jiezhineng Software, which has cooperated with Air China to learn from Boeing and Airbus, understand their standards, methods and digitalization process, and try and apply them in combination with the characteristics of the domestic complex equipment industry. Today, Jiezhineng Software has not only applied these digital technologies to civil aircraft and EMU fields, but also further extended them to production and manufacturing fields such as automobile production lines.
Digitalization of Boeing and Airbus
According to Boeing's 2019 Services Market Outlook report, the value of the European aviation service support market will reach 3.1 trillion by 2028, with an annual growth rate of 3.5%, of which the commercial service market is worth 1.6 billion US dollars. To this end, Boeing has signed a number of new digital service contracts and agreements with several airlines, such as a five-year digital navigation mapping and Jeppesen FliteDeck Pro electronic flight bag agreement with Iceland's Atlanta Airlines, and a multi-year maintenance work toolbox agreement with ACE Cargo and Star Air.
It can be said that Boeing's digital capabilities play a pivotal role in the industry. So, how did Jiezhineng Software learn these core digital capabilities?
As early as 2002, when Jiezhineng Information, the predecessor of Jiezhineng Software, was first established, its main business was software development and information integration, as well as maintenance of electromechanical equipment and information equipment. In view of the fact that many maintenance personnel were needed at the equipment maintenance site at that time, they began to consider whether a more advanced remote maintenance could be achieved, so that the site would rely less on the skills of these personnel and the number of personnel would be reduced.
In 2011, they had a rare opportunity to exchange knowledge with Boeing and began to learn about the entire digital model of Boeing and Airbus, and learned that all the data in the files and forms circulating in these two companies are structured. In addition, they found that the reason why Boeing and Airbus have such good digital capabilities is that they have brought the Systems Engineering Process (SEP) management to its fullest extent. All designs are built based on the idea of SEP. For example, the product design process includes guarantee design and considers the operation and maintenance of the equipment in advance.
Moreover, when they were building digital applications such as aircraft health management for Air China Limited (Air China), they realized that if the data of the maintenance objects were not standardized, structured, and systematized, then its properties and performance, including parameters such as power consumption, frequency, and temperature, would not be able to be linked to faults, and it would be difficult to rely on computers to help people make predictions in advance.
In the following four years, they studied the digitalization of Boeing and Airbus, including the standards and methods used, the process of achieving digitalization, and so on.
At the end of 2015, they set out to create a digital platform product with a full life cycle in accordance with relevant international standards, and continued to iterate. Today, the digital platform of Jiezhineng Software has completed the leap from nothing to something. It took almost 10 years from entering this field to where it is today.
Build the underlying platform for enterprise digitalization
Industry 4.0 uses data to drive digitalization, which involves some concepts, such as model factories, data modeling, process modeling, business modeling, etc. These are relatively professional scenarios in the industrial field.
As for the definition of digitalization, Li Xia, CEO of Jiezhineng Software, said: "Digitalization means that all activities must be defined in advance, and computers must help people face corresponding problems. The data and processes flowing in the information system should be standardized and structured so that computers can recognize them instead of just for manual review and call. This is the goal of digitalization."
"We hope to help industrial enterprises complete all aspects of product design, manufacturing, operation and maintenance, and scrapping based on data. This includes not only manufacturers, but also operators and parts suppliers. The goal is to enable these data in the entire ecosystem to be connected and linked, and to continuously generate value."
During the epidemic, many companies are facing huge operational difficulties and pain points in resuming work and production. The innovative "intelligent operation and maintenance" model proposed by Rockwell Automation, a leading company in industrial automation and digital transformation, came into being.
Rockwell Automation's "intelligent operation and maintenance" can use the intelligent operation and maintenance platform based on the Internet of Things to help customers collect and integrate a large amount of equipment data and achieve extensive and true data interconnection. Through the upgrade of new technologies, the existing stock systems can be managed and data integrated to achieve effective collaboration and docking, completely solving the problem of "information islands" and reducing excessive reliance on manual operation processes.
How will the operation and maintenance technology of Jiezhineng Software used in aviation and EMUs be upgraded?
Leifeng.com learned that they will follow the same international standards as Boeing and Airbus, and continuously upgrade the system based on the feedback from customers in different scenarios in system engineering, iterating and optimizing in the process of trial and error. Now, they have become the supplier of the core component (OMU) of active operation and maintenance of intelligent EMU on the Beijing-Zhangjiakou High-speed Railway (i.e. the Beijing-Zhangjiakou High-speed Railway). In addition, this core component has also been deployed on Line 17 of Shanghai Metro and Line 10 of Shenzhen Metro.
"In fact, the core of OMU is not the hardware, but the industrial software and models inside it." Li Xia said that the core of the operation and maintenance brain is the application of artificial intelligence technology. CRRC experts will use the AI tools we provide to build models. Although we have our own mathematics team, customers understand vehicles better than we do and know which parameters are related to the model better than we do. Therefore, in terms of business logic, as an enabler, we turn all these things into standardized and engineered tools, so that maintenance experts and design experts can independently build and verify models. This is the concept we follow.
Leifeng.com learned that Jiezhineng Software positions itself as a system technology company that provides full life cycle platform tools and products to empower the digital transformation of industrial enterprises. In their view, the reason why Boeing and Airbus have been successful in digital transformation is that they have greatly reduced their dependence on personnel and their skills through artificial intelligence and data-driven means. The accumulation and inheritance of knowledge through standardization and structuring of the operation process has commercial value.
Dimensionality reduction application of operation and maintenance brain
IT operation and maintenance is an indispensable role for every information-based enterprise. IT operation and maintenance personnel need to monitor and manage the operation of network equipment, server equipment, operating systems, various application support software, and the core business systems of the enterprise itself. When the system is abnormal, the operation and maintenance personnel need to discover, locate and solve the problem in a timely manner.
In what scenarios is the operation and maintenance brain of Jiezhineng Software mainly used?
It is understood that the current solutions of Jieneng Software include high-speed EMU health management, civil aviation aircraft health management, and intelligent maintenance of industrial production.
In addition to being used in trains and civil aircraft, the operation and maintenance brain of Jiezhineng Software will be applied to the MEB production line of Shanghai Volkswagen's new energy vehicles in May this year. It is reported that this project is a joint effort of Shanghai Volkswagen, Dalian Auto and Jiezhineng. It is a pilot project that started three years ago. Now, the operation and maintenance brain of Jiezhineng Software has become the standard of Shanghai Volkswagen's new energy vehicle MEB production line.
Leifeng.com learned that each production line must be equipped with the maintenance brain of Jiezhineng software to monitor the status of the production line, predict faults, etc. In fact, during the operation of the production line, no matter how simple the equipment is, it may fail. Once a failure occurs, the box will tell you which component caused the failure, and the success rate of your inspection and repair will be very high.
Li Xia said: "Although the production line is much simpler than the applications on airplanes and trains, simplicity does not mean it is easy to make. Because the more complex the design, the stronger the manufacturer itself is, and the more willing they are to invest in installing sensors and analyzing its design performance. But generally speaking, ordinary equipment manufacturers have limited investment in this area. However, Shanghai Volkswagen realized this problem in its cooperation with Jiezhineng and equipped many professionals to conduct relevant research, which had a significant impact on the project results."
Today, Jieneng Software’s customers include Air China, Shenzhen Airlines, China Eastern Airlines, CRRC, Railway Bureau, and industrial production fields such as automobile production lines.
As for whether the track will be further broadened in the future, Li Xia revealed: "Digitalization is needed by all industries. Every industry needs to build business models, compile fishbone diagrams, and make standardized operation templates. For example, if I open a restaurant, my goal is to run the restaurant well, so I have to break down the business, how many departments and specific positions there are, and then further break it down and quantify it. Ultimately, all companies in the future will be like this, and each position will have a standard operation template, and we want to be the pioneer in China."
"We refine our products based on the high standards and strict requirements of the aviation and train fields to improve product quality and reliability. By expanding industries and fields, we will make the cost low enough to serve more industries in the future. We believe that all companies are facing the need for digital transformation, and this trend is unstoppable."
In the future, Jiezhineng Software will continue to upgrade these existing full-life cycle platforms, which is their top priority. They believe that when the platform becomes a production system that can truly reduce costs and increase efficiency, reduce staff and increase efficiency to change the existing production methods, it will be more valuable.
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