A drone hunting for missing rivets and signs of corrosion over a hulking C-17 transport is among the initiatives Boeing Global Services (BGS) is pursuing to enhance productivity.
Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, on the company’s first-quarter earnings call on April 22, said automation and artificial intelligence efforts have cut cycle times at BGS by approximately 25% year to date, as the business deals with a record $33 billion in backlog. BGS boss Chris Raymond, in an interview, said the efforts are not stopping there.
At the company’s maintenance, repair and overhaul site in San Antonio, BGS is pairing the drone technology with artificial intelligence software it calls the Automated Damage Detection System, Raymond said. The algorithm is training itself over multiple inspections to recognize defects.
“What's now starting to happen is the algorithm is able to compare and say, ‘you’ve got missing a rivet here and here, you’ve got corrosion here, here and here, and you're going to have to repaint here, here and here,’” Raymond said. “It's starting to reduce the flow time and improve the safety,” he said, in part by reducing the need for workers to climb all over the aircraft.
Another area the company is looking to streamline processes using new tools is in the supply chain, Raymond said. The company has large volumes of low-dollar transactional proposals. Emerging software tools could automate much of that, with procurement staff focusing their efforts on ensuring everything is correct.
“We’re trying to pick things that today frustrate our people because they have to touch so many legacy databases to do their job, or that would just be really good for customer responsiveness.”
“We’ll make mistakes,” he acknowledged. “The trick is not to do science projects. Pick projects that are really going to make a material difference to your business in the capacity sense or in a customer responsiveness sense.”
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