The aerospace service supply chain is an immensely complex one that deals with the efficient procurement of correct parts, software or human resources to update, service or maintain a product during its life in service. Adhoc, unpredictable service requests, frequent pull of multiple resources from multiple partners, and dynamic resource search problems using multiple performance criteria make some of the characteristics that define the aerospace service supply chain.

Market drivers in the civil aviation industry are pressing for a leaner service supply chain. Increased demand for travel, fuel prices, and market competition forces airlines to develop and expand their own service capabilities, as a means of reducing costs. The search for an intelligent service chain leads us to the notion of the self-serving asset.

The self-serving-assets in a highly networked environment (SAHNE) project aims to bring the intelligent asset vision alive in the aerospace sector, where parts are self-aware, and have the goal to maximise their life in service by contacting, selecting and procuring service providers autonomously. The project is carried out in collaboration with the Boeing Company.

We use a combination of tools and methodologies including multi-agent systems, auction theory, multi-objective optimisation and multi-criteria decision making to enable assets to effectively discover and select services while coordinating with one another. The project aims to create technology that will lead to an open, consistent service chain where complex database transactions are eliminated, and an emergent, yet rather self-capable system starts to materialise.

Project timeline

November 2007 - November 2010

Researchers involved

Dr Alexandra Brintrup, Dr Tomas Sanchez-Lopez, Sebastian Kruse, Prof Duncan McFarlane

Industrial partners

The Boeing Company

Publications

• Brintrup, A and McFarlane, D.C. and Ranasinghe, D.C. and Lopez , T. S. and Owens, K (2009) Will intelligent assets fly? Towards self-serving aircraft assets, in submission IEEE Intelligent Systems . ISSN 1541-1672
• Brintrup, A and Ranasinghe, D.C. and McFarlane, D.C. and Parlikad, A.K.N. (2009) A roadmap for the self-serving asset in civil aerospace In: International Academy of Production Engineering Conference (CIRP), 1-2 April 2009, Cranfield, UK
• Brintrup, A and Davis, C and Gong, T and Ligtvoet, A and Robinson, E and Willigen, W (2009) Distributed control of emergence: local and global anti-component strategies in particle swarms and ant colonies In: 2009 Third IEEE International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems, 14-18 Sept 2009, San Francisco, California, USA
• Brintrup, A and Ranasinghe, D.C. and McFarlane, D.C. and Parlikad, A.K.N. (2008) The intelligent asset across the product lifecycle In: 5th International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management, 9-11 July 2008, Seoul, Korea

Contact

For more details about this project, please contact Professor Duncan McFarlane dcm@eng.cam.ac.uk