Nov 17, 2010When aircraft engines arrive at Vector Aerospace Engine Services—Atlantic (VAESA) for repairs or maintenance, each component could undergo a complex route that includes cleaning, inspection and repair, with the work taking place on as many as a dozen different machines and stations. Tracking every component is absolutely critical; if any one of them is missing, delays can result, caused by manual searches for that item and its order paperwork.
VAESA had been seeking an RFID-based solution for more than a year, and is now in the completion stages of a six-month pilot of a passive ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) solution provided by IDBlue, an RFID technology firm based in St. John's, Newfoundland. Having proven to itself that the solution works, and that it yields 100 percent tag read rates, the company is now planning the installation of a permanent system, in order to track engine components by means of fixed reader portals, desktop interrogators at workstations, and EPC Gen 2 passive RFID tags affixed to equipment paperwork.
VAESA's facility in Slemon Park, Prince Edward Island, services three types of aircraft engines that typically need to be disassembled, with components going through a variety of processes. The company prints routing paperwork for each component, listing such details as its part number, its repair work order number and its serial number (if applicable), as well as engine-specific details, such as the module serial number and order task.
"The opportunity for improvement we were seeking with RFID was real-time visibility for each component," says Jonathon Bonnell, VAESA's process-development engineer and overall RFID implementation project manager. Most engines have 80 repairable components, he explains, and are transported on carts throughout the facility's multiple departments, as well as the multiple workstations within those departments. If a component needs to be located, it can require staff members to walk through the departments searching for paperwork matching the item in question.
To test the effectiveness of an RFID system, Vector began with a pilot to track three engine components to and from the machine shop at which much of the repair work is performed, and to the kitting area where the components wait in storage until all are ready for re-inspection and reassembly into the engine. In this way, Bonnell says, he could see at what time each tracked item went into repair, as well as when it came out of that area and when it entered storage.
The system consists of two Alien Technology portal readers installed in a hallway leading into the machine shop, along with another in a hallway connecting to the kitting area. The company also installed several desktop readers in the machine shop at specific workstations, says Jeff Brown, IDBlue's VP of services, so that management could have visibility into when each component arrived at a specific station for service, such as grinding or other repair work. The IDBlue asset-tracking software was installed as a standalone system to receive data from the reads. The software links the information with each item's description, and presents that data to the managers so that they can detect each component's status.
Wheeled carts standing approximately five and a half feet high, each with three shelves, can transport about 40 components at any given time. Each cart is then wheeled down the hallway, en route to the machine shop, where two RFID reader portals are located. When the cart passes the first portal, the tags on its paperwork are read, and that information is then sent to the IDBlue asset-tracking software (which stores those tag reads) via a cabled connection. The read at the second portal, located farther down the hall, helps the software determine in which direction the cart is transporting the items. Despite the potential for RF interference resulting from the large amount of metal at the facility, Bonnell says, the interrogators achieved a 100 percent read rate at a range of up to 15 feet.
After the work is completed, the carts are again loaded with repaired components, and are then wheeled past the two hallway readers, as well as a third interrogator located in the kitting area. At that time, workers can access the software and retrieve updates indicating where the equipment is located, along with when it arrived there.
Once the system is fully deployed, Bonnell says, he hopes to have readers installed at most of the workstations in the machine room, or on the shelves on which the components are placed prior to servicing at each station. The IDBlue software will then link its data directly to VAESA's ERP system.
By August 2010—four months after the pilot commenced—the company had tagged 123 components, consisting of two types of cylindrical cases and a third built of cone-shaped metal. "The system is working quite well," Bonnell states. "It's highlighted definite opportunities," including using the system to track work in progress, analyze dwell times, and receive alerts if a component falls out of its scheduled repair path (if it is taken to kitting before all repairs are completed, for example). "Based on the benefits quantified to date, we believe the real-time visibility is going to provide significant time savings and efficiency gains."
In addition, VAESA is undertaking another pilot in which passive high-frequency (HF) RFID tags would be attached to tools and attachments installed in the machines. The staff could utilize an IDBlue handheld reader to read the tags prior to installing tools and attachments in the machine for a specific repair task. IDBlue software would then be able to issue an alert that could be displayed on the handheld, if the ID number on the tag linked to data about a particular tool did not match the tool required for a specific job. Bonnell says he expects to launch this system within the next few months.
