Artificial intelligence (AI) has now become part of our culture whether we use it on smart phone applications or digital media or purchasing products and services. We employ “apps” to assist in our decision making. Andromeda Systems Inc. (ASI) Innovative New Products Division (INPD) from the Orange Park, FL office has brought this new technology to aircraft maintenance and is expanding use to several new technologies. It is called Artificial Intelligence Prognostic Steering™ (AIPS).
Historically, Fault Detection & Isolation has been dependent on in-depth maintainer training and experience as well as extensive engineering and technical data. Progress over time has provided the maintainers with electronic, interactive technical manuals for troubleshooting with minimal fault isolation assistance but lacked embedded fault analysis and prioritized solution recommendations. Failure analysis is performed off-line using service specific software tools making enterprise-wide data collaboration difficult. Sharing of successful resolution results and maintenance procedures outside of an individual location is limited. ASI INPD’s new product – AIPS – provides the user with a prioritized set of solutions ranked by success rate and maintenance time (down time) – improving availability and reducing supportability costs.
Robert McCutcheon, the AIPS Project Manager, and his team are delivering the AIPS solution to the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program to improve maintenance response times, reduce costs, and improve safety. Early results of AIPS testing demonstrated the ability to improve readiness by reducing maintenance times of the F-35 aircraft while lowering sustainment costs. The first trials were conducted last year by ASI’s Field Engineer, Richard Scott, at Luke AFB in actual F-35A active squadrons. The outcome was tremendous and has sparked an enhanced development program at INPD to expand AIPS to other industries, so says Ron Wagner, ASI’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO); “Virtually any maintenance environment where point of performance data is collected, AIPS can optimize maintenance.”
An intuitive algorithm has been designed by the ASI INPD and NLP Logix teams to actively process practical solutions based on real-time data and information. Another feature of AIPS is the ability to identify False Alarms (FA) that contribute to unnecessary maintenance time, leading to asset down time. AIPS has the capability to avoid the costly removal of good components by analyzing previous repair records.
AIPS can be embedded in existing legacy systems, function as a stand-alone application or integrated with ASI’s OptiAM software package. Its ease of use is remarkable and provides that “wow” factor to the aviation maintenance personnel. It is one of those components that improves everything around it, e.g. supply, training, and operations.
AIPS also uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to address data quality issues, has the ability to self-correct or generate recommendations for adjudication in real time. It is self-learning (gets smarter the more you use it, just like your smartphone) and will eventually predict ways to mitigate corrective maintenance.
Maintenance time and logistical delays drives high sustainment costs across any maintenance environment. Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning can automate the analysis in order to optimize maintenance time and cost. AIPS provides this automation and is scalable to diverse data structures and advanced optimization. As a Stand-Alone or Integrated within an existing maintenance management system, AIPS provides the most current analysis of the most recent data available.
To learn more about ASI’s Artificial Intelligence Prognostic Steering™ (AIPS) initiative please email Rob McCutcheon at Robert.mccutcheon@androsysinc.com or contact him by telephone at 904-402-8679.