GE Aviation launches Configuration Data Exchange to reduce maintenance costs

GE Aviation launched the Configuration Data Exchange for the aviation industry, establishing an exchange of data to drive asset productivity and maintenance optimization across the aviation ecosystem.

The Configuration Data Exchange connects aviation companies and allows for the digital exchange of key operations, maintenance and configuration data. In basic terms, this can be thought of as a data pipeline that will allow for two-way asset data flow between airlines, MROs, lessors, OEMs and parts brokers, and it will be agnostic to the various IT systems of record.

“There are major inefficiencies in the management of data generated within our industry,” said Jim Daily, vice president and chief digital officer for GE Aviation. “Through Predix, the Configuration Data Exchange will bring disparate systems together to provide future insights and will help to reduce the $4 billion annual spend on manually managing data within airlines.”

Working together to bring Configuration Data Exchange to market, GE Aviation signed a teaming agreement today with Capgemini. The two teams are working together on customer engagements, and Capgemini will provide implementation services bringing its aviation experience to help accelerate adoption and business process improvements with our mutual customers.

Disparate maintenance and engineering systems across the industry, as well as millions of paper and PDF records, have long been identified as a key barrier to reducing operating costs and improving asset utilization. While capturing and processing aircraft sensor data and fault codes have been performed for years, there is a considerable information gap with respect to maintenance, repair and installed configuration data.

“Anyone can insert a debit card into an ATM anywhere in the world to get their balance and withdraw cash in a matter of seconds. But for a lessor or operator to find a specific maintenance record for a return could literally take months,” explains Ray Stetter, vice president for Capgemini’s North America aviation practice.

Configuration Data Exchange is the foundation of GE’s Intelligent Fleet offering that will enable customers to achieve intelligent insights around parts life management, service bulletin compliance, advanced monitoring and diagnostics, inventory planning, and maintenance optimization.

Today, more than 100 airlines covering 10,000 aircraft are GE Aviation Digital Solutions’ customers for such services as flight and fuel analytics, navigation services, airline operations management and planning and recovery.