CASE STUDY

STEPPING ROLLS-ROYCE’S AIRCRAFT AVAILABILITY UP A GEAR

Rolls-Royce wanted to expand its data analytics capabilities in order provide a more proactive role in improving its airline customers’ operational performance.

CHALLENGE Rolls-Royce’s vision is to ensure that every Rolls-Royce powered aircraft takes off and lands, on time, every time. With around 900 aircraft powered by Rolls-Royce engines airborne at any one time, that’s no mean feat.

Rolls-Royce’s aircraft engines are loaded with sensors that generate thousands of real-time signals representing everything from fuel pressure to operating temperatures. To predict when an engine required repairs or maintenance, Rolls-Royce was monitoring data transmitted from its 4,500 aircraft engines. However, it recognised a need to go further and provide a wider range of services to its airline customers.

Matt Burns, Head of Airline and Availability Centre, Rolls-Royce, explains, “The general repair and overhaul of our engines represents around 4% of an airline’s total operating costs. However, there is another 60% that our product can have a direct affect on. For example, a 1%

fuel saving can be worth $250,000 per aircraft per year. We recognised that by expanding our data analytics capabilities we could take a more proactive role in improving our customers’ overall operational performance.”

Rolls-Royce called upon the services of Altius to transform it data analysis capabilities to allow better and faster service decisions to be made.

SOLUTIONAltius’s consultants worked closely with Rolls-Royce’s Availability Centre to understand their information requirements and identify data sources and feeds. Altius’s solution involved taking real time data from millions of data points, including data from engine sensors, as well as external data such as each aircraft’s forward schedules and weather reports, and historical data such as service and maintenance reports.

THE BENEFITS

�� Scalable, cloud-based data platform

�� Interactive dashboard reporting

�� Real time, accurate reporting

�� Drill down capability

�� Improved data insight

�� Improved employee engagement

Microsoft’s Azure IoT Suite is used to collect and aggregate the vast quantities of data and algorithms then analyse and model it. The information is then presented by Altius, using Microsoft Power BI on screens that form the focal point of Rolls-Royce’s brand new Aircraft Availability Centre in Derby and to the Aircraft Availability teams around the world.

Incredibly detailed and powerful visuals enable the teams to monitor its entire fleet and track each aircraft on a global map in real time. By selecting an aircraft, they can drill down for detailed information including the flight’s departure and destination airports, departure and arrival times, the engine’s serial number, the aircraft’s speed and altitude, its service and maintenance history, as well as any flagged issues and the status of repairs and parts.

“Altius has helped Rolls-Royce to fully exploit all our data, put it all into context and present it in a simple and highly effective manner. We now have a scalable solution that provides real time, actionable insights to ensure the reliability and safe operation of every aircraft in our fleet,” comments Matt Burns.

BENEFITSWith detailed visuals and real time reports in full view, Rolls-Royce’s Aircraft Availability teams now have far greater insight into its fleet and can make faster, more accurate and more helpful service and maintenance decisions. This in turn will help them to maximise aircraft availability.

By analysing data from its engines against external data and historical trends, the teams will also be able to help their airline customers to understand exactly which factors have the most impact on fuel consumption and operational performance.

© Copyright 2018 Altius Ltd.

+44 (0)1483 418628

info@altius.co.uk

@altiusbi

www.altius.co.uk

ABOUT ALTIUSWith offices in the UK and Pune in India, Altius helps organisations to harness data and use it to understand, model and predict business performance. Combining our business knowledge with advanced technology and architecture skills, alongside project management and business change capabilities, Altius delivers real-time, reliable and actionable data-driven business insights direct to decision makers. Altius’s management intelligence and data analytics solutions are proven to drive improved end-user engagement, business efficiency and profitability. Its tailored information managed services extend beyond a traditional helpdesk offering, encompassing configuration and management of cloud infrastructure, through management of applications and critical business processes to the provision of fully outsources data services.

If you would like to discuss how Altius can help you extract value from your data to help improve business performance, please get in touch.

Matt Burns concludes

“The Altius team have been fantastic to work with – they really go the extra mile. They very quickly got to grips with our challenging and complex set of requirements and delivered an incredibly powerful solution that provides meaningful insights.”