Boeing, Fujitsu Launch AIT Retrofit Package

Boeing and Fujitsu are partnering to offer comprehensive automated identification technology (AIT) packages for retrofit on commercial aircraft — any manufacturer and any type. The first application should launch in the second quarter of 2012. This could have a major impact on the aftermarket, and very few people in the industry saw this coming. Boeing originally planned to include radio frequency identification (RFID) on its first 787, as did Airbus on its A380, but neither effort, despite their early collaboration, worked as originally envisioned.

Boeing’s Phil Coop, program manager for the new Boeing AIT business, told Aviation Week that airlines understood the RFID benefits from Boeing’s earlier efforts, but found it too cumbersome to make all of the pieces work together. Airlines also didn’t want AIT solely on new 787s. Program delays prompted Boeing to refocus on getting the Dreamliner to market without RFID while developing a complete AIT package for the existing fleet.

The partners’ one-stop-shop approach aims to take the complexity out of purchasing, implementing and managing the system. They provide everything — tags, readers, software, middleware, application software, data integration, training, validation and performance guarantees — to the operator. Fujitsu will work with other AIT suppliers, including MacSema for contact memory buttons and various RFID reader suppliers, such as Intermec, to create the bundled offering because no one in the RFID industry can provide end-to-end solutions on its own, says Toshiya Sato, Fujistsu’s general manager of AIT.

Boeing will offer five standard solutions initially: emergency equipment management (for items such as oxygen generators, life jackets and all airborne emergency equipment), rotable management (for systems such as starter generators and APUs), structural rotables (including fuselage doors, flaps and landing gear doors), repairables management (for non-serialized parts), and structural repairs and airframe degradation management (to monitor corrosion control and prevention programs, RVSM aerodynamics, for instance).

Boeing is talking with an airline about being its launch customer and development partner.

The program’s first phase will validate processes and procedures, as well as the value proposition, and should finish in April, says Coop. The second phase involves static and performance testing via temporary retrofits and should conclude in July. Proof of concept on an in-service airplane and a global pilot round out the third phase and should wrap up in the first quarter 2012, says Coop. Boeing plans to offer the emergency equipment solution in the second quarter of 2012.

Coop says “a typical customer that operates a fleet of 40 Boeing 777s and invests $200,000-$250,000 in tagging life jackets alone could save $1 million per year alone in labor.”