A Web-based Product Service System for aerospace maintenance, repair and overhaul services

doi:10.1016/j.compind.2012.02.016

Computers in Industry

Volume 63, Issue 4, May 2012, Pages 338-348

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compind.2012.02.016 Get rights and content

Abstract

Manufacturing enterprises around the world have made significant efforts to provide high value added services in addition to their traditional product development and manufacturing business. A product service system (PSS) is presented in this paper which aims to better integrate product development with maintenance and service operations. This project focuses on the maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services in the aerospace industry. A MRO service model is proposed for the development of the proposed PSS. An ontology-based knowledge representation model is developed for the reuse of knowledge unambiguously in MRO services. An initial attempt has been made to demonstrate the role of PSS in the aerospace industry as a decision support tool for MRO services. Product lifecycle management (PLM) environment and Web-based technologies have been developed to enable the methodology to provide services and support in the aerospace manufacturing and flight operations business.

Introduction

As a consequence of the increasing challenges from global operation, sustainable development and environment regulations, manufacturing enterprises are making more efforts to provide high value added services in addition to their traditional design and manufacturing business. The concept of Product Service System (PSS) has been proposed and investigated to better exploit the potential benefits of integrating product development with related services. Practical industrial cases implementing PSS have been investigated in recent years. For example, Williams [1] applied PSS in the automotive industry. Meier and Krug [2] proposed a PSS solution to the integration of the development and supply of products and services. Mittermeyer [3] applied PSS in health care. Qu [4] applied PSS to serve as a production process.

In the aerospace industry, maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services are normally provided during product usage. Given that an airplane is a durable product with a life span of over 30 years, opportunities abound for the application of PSS in aviation maintenance, repair and overhaul. The profitability of the aviation industry is not just from the sale of aircrafts, but also from maintaining them for an anticipated lifespan. This research will focus on applying PSS in the aviation industry to specifically support the MRO service. To represent the MRO service information and knowledge, ontologies have been designed for knowledge representation and management. Based on ontology, the service knowledge is formalized in OWL (Web Ontology Language) which is an ontology language for semantic web developed by World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

The research aims to develop a PSS to better integrate the product development process with associated maintenance and service processes, and help manufacturers extend the responsibilities to the use phase until the end of an aircraft's life. The product and service related knowledge collected through the whole product life cycle will be represented using an ontology-based method. An ontology-based knowledge representation model will be proposed to offer a means for the reuse of knowledge unambiguously. The proposed PSS will be developed using Web technologies to provide services and supports, which can be easily accessed by distributed users through the internet at all times and places. The system structure and implementation using knowledge management technologies are also described in this paper.

The remainder of this article is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces the concepts and previous research. Section 3 describes the proposed methodology and the enabling architecture of the proposed PSS for aircraft MRO services. Section 4 describes the key technologies for enabling the PSS. Section 5 describes how to generate the reference solutions for aircraft MRO services using the Web-based PSS. Finally, the conclusions and further work are summarized in Section 6.

Section snippets

Literature review

In the past decades, service industries have been the area of economic growth for most developed and developing countries. The definition of service varies according to statements from different researchers. Sasser et al. [5] described the notion of a service as the bundle of goods and services sold to customers and the relative importance of each component to the customers. Goldstein et al. [6] claimed that service should include both the benefits and value of the service to customers.

The PSS framework from 3 different life cycle perspectives

The main stakeholders in the commercial aviation industry are: airlines, aircraft manufacturers and MRO providers. The objective of the airlines is to ensure safe operation, reduce operation and maintenance costs, and minimize the turn-around time. Aircraft manufacturers seek to reduce the development time of the aircraft life cycle and cost. MRO service providers strive to provide a serviceable aircraft at minimum cost and the shortest turn-around time.

With respect to the design of a

Technologies for implementing the proposed PSS

Some of the service offering approaches used in service business include full services, solution selling and total care solutions [29]. The proposed PSS can be regarded as a kind of outsourcing service, which is designed to support MRO services in the aviation industry. The reference service solutions for the specific customer requirements will be created using the proposed PSS. The ownership of the PSS is not important. It can be retained by the manufacturer and provider. Moreover, it may be a

Case study

The case study focuses on developing a service ontology to support MRO design and create reference solutions for MRO service providers using the Web-based PSS. The example used in this research to evaluate the proposed methodology is an aircraft engine, which is a critical part of an aircraft. The Web-based PSS is applied in this article to overcome the third limitation mentioned above. The general approach is depicted in Fig. 7.

When a set of specific MRO services are identified by analyzing

Conclusions and further work

This paper presented on-going research into the development of a Web-based Product Service System within three different life cycle perspectives. A service-centric PSS have been proposed which is suitable for result-orientated PSS and use-orientated PSS. As the core element of the service business in the aviation industry, the notion of MRO and the overall processes of MRO services have been described. With the help of the proposed PSS, the responsibilities of the manufacturer are extended to

Acknowledgements

This research is funded by China Scholar Council (Ref: 2009-3012) for joint research between Nanjing University of Science and Technology (China) and the University of Greenwich (UK).

Mr. Haihua Zhu received the BS degree in Mechanical engineering and automation from the Nanjing university of Science and Technology. He is currently pursuing the PhD degree in the Department of Industrial Engineering in the School of Mechanical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology. Funded by the China Scholarship Council, he pursue his research in Great Britain as a joint PhD student from Sep. 2009 to Sep. 2011. His research interests include knowledge management, product

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Prof. James Gao is Medway chair of manufacturing engineering and head of Centre for Innovative Product Development in the School of Engineering, University of Greenwich. Prior to joining University of Greenwich in 2006, he obtained a PhD in Computer Aided Design and Manufacturing from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UK) in 1987 and 1989 respectively. He was a lecturer/senior lecturer at Cranfield University (1993–2006), and a research associate at Loughborough University of Technology (1989–1993). He is a member of the editorial board of several international journals and the international scientific committee of many conferences. He has over 190 publications in international journals and conferences, and gives keynote speeches at various international conferences and industrial workshops. He is a world-class academic with international reputation in manufacturing engineering, particularly in the application of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the manufacturing industry. He directed a large number of research projects sponsored by research councils and leading manufacturing companies and service providers in the manufacturing related sectors. His current research interests include collaborative product development, enterprise information and knowledge management, digital manufacturing including CAD/CAM/CIM, product lifecycle management including lean and sustainable manufacturing, product integrated maintenance and service management.

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Prof. Dunbing Tang earned his PhD from Nanjing University of Science and Technology (NUST) in March 2000. Then he spent 2 years on his post-doctoral research at Tsinghua University of Beijing and City University of Hong Kong. Funded by the renowned Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, he conducted his research in Aachen University (RWTH Aachen, Germany) as an Alexander von Humboldt research scientist from July 2002 to February 2004. Thereafter he moved to Cranfield University (UK) as a research fellow. Offered with a full-time professorship, Prof. Tang joined Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in December 2005. Up to now, Prof. Tang has conducted several research grants as a principal investigator (PI) or co-PI, and he has published over 70 academic papers. His research interests include engineering design, knowledge-based systems, enterprise integration, manufacturing system modeling and simulation, etc. His research outcome can be found in international high-quality academic journals such as International Journal of Production Research, International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, IMechE Part B-Journal of Engineering Manufacture, Computers & Industrial Engineering, International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, Computers in Industry, Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, Robotics & Computer Integrated Manufacturing, Concurrent Engineering – Research & Applications.

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A Web-based Product Service System for aerospace maintenance, repair and overhaul services

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

Literature review

The PSS framework from 3 different life cycle perspectives

Technologies for implementing the proposed PSS

Case study

Conclusions and further work

Acknowledgements

Journal of Cleaner Production

Journal of Operations Management

Journal of Cleaner Production

Design Studies

Journal of Cleaner Production

Decision Support Systems

Robotics and Computer-Integrated Manufacturing

International Journal of Human–Computer Studies

Expert Systems with Applications

Managing the capacity of industrial product-service-systems

Journal of PPS Management

Product-service systems in health care: case study of a drug–device combination

International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing

Analytical target cascading-enabled optimal configuration platform for production service systems

International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing

Management of Service Operations: Text, Cases and Readings

Services marketing is different

Business

Product Service Systems, Ecological and Economic Basics

Smart products and service systems for e-business transformation

International Journal of Technology Management

Life cycle simulation for analyzing product service systems

The challenge of conceptual modeling for product-service systems: status-quo and perspectives for reference models and modeling languages

Information Systems and e-Business Management