The U.S. Air Force has awarded StandardAero a contract to apply Predictive Maintenance, Readiness and Reliability tools to the TF33 engine program. The contract deliverables will provide the USAF the capability to optimize the readiness, reliability and costs associated with the maintenance performed on these engines, driven by advanced machine learning integration and utilizing government cloud hosting. Most urgently, the contract will deliver supporting tools that provide a near term boost in asset availability, while also providing long-term supply chain predictive analytics. For this contract, StandardAero is leading a team network that includes IBM, Isobar Public Sector and Reliability Concepts International.
StandardAero’s Engineering Services team has successfully developed multiple diagnostic and predictive maintenance tools for a number of engine fleets, including the C-130’s T56 engine, the T-38’s J85 engine, the C-5’s TF39 engine, as well as the F100-220 engines used on the F-15 and F-16 fleets. The requirement to establish the predictive maintenance capability in a cloud-based platform makes this contract unique compared to previous StandardAero on premises support.
“We are excited to adapt our tools to this critical military platform,” stated Marc Drobny, president of StandardAero’s Military & Energy division. “The Air Force has been on the leading edge of Predictive Maintenance philosophy and implementation and StandardAero is proud to play a leading role in their development team.”
StandardAero’s predictive maintenance methodologies and reliability centered maintenance practices have been proven to improve reliability while reducing life cycles support costs in aircraft engines, and these concepts can be applied to other mechanical systems as well.