Airbus Helicopters Chooses AVEVA Solutions for Equipment Testing and Certification Processes
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- Europe
Country
- France
Product
- System Platform
- InTouch HMI
- Historian
- Historian Clients
Tech Stack
- SCADA
- PLC
- Ethernet Network
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Cost Savings
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
Applicable Industries
- Aerospace
Applicable Functions
- Quality Assurance
- Product Research & Development
Use Cases
- Process Control & Optimization
- Real-Time Location System (RTLS)
Services
- System Integration
- Software Design & Engineering Services
About The Customer
Airbus Helicopters is a leading manufacturer of helicopters for various purposes including military, commercial, emergency service and private use. Since its founding in 1992, the company has been responsible for many technology “firsts” in the development of these helicopters. Located along the southern coast of France, Airbus Helicopters counts more than 12,000 helicopters in service with over 3,000 customers in more than 150 countries. The company is known for its meticulous testing methods designed to meet stringent benchmark and flight measurement requirements before the helicopters are put into service.
The Challenge
Airbus Helicopters, a leading manufacturer of military, commercial, emergency service and private helicopters, was facing challenges in operating its product testing benches. The company needed a robust software platform and process applications to accurately and efficiently operate its product testing benches. The existing system needed to be replaced with a single, easy-to-use solution for supervising test beds and logistics. The new system needed to be open and extensible, capable of interfacing seamlessly with additional testing installations. The deployment of the new solution had to be done without jeopardizing the functionality of the overall testing centre.
The Solution
Airbus Helicopters selected AVEVA's System Platform for its comprehensive functionality and robustness. The open architecture of the platform allowed for the integration of specific functions as needed by the team. The platform leverages information technologies and provides process automation to enable visibility of processes, manage compliance and enhance operational efficiency, all in real-time. In addition to System Platform, Airbus Helicopters also implemented InTouch HMI, Historian and Historian Clients. InTouch HMI is an open and extensible Supervisory HMI and SCADA solution that enables the rapid creation of standardized, reusable visualization applications for deployment across the entire enterprise. Historian is a large-volume plant data historian that unites a high-speed data acquisition and storage system with a traditional relational database management system. Historian Clients generates real-time and historical data charts and reports directly from the Historian.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Case Study missing?
Start adding your own!
Register with your work email and create a new case study profile for your business.
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
Airbus Soars with Wearable Technology
Building an Airbus aircraft involves complex manufacturing processes consisting of thousands of moving parts. Speed and accuracy are critical to business and competitive advantage. Improvements in both would have high impact on Airbus’ bottom line. Airbus wanted to help operators reduce the complexity of assembling cabin seats and decrease the time required to complete this task.
Case Study
Aircraft Predictive Maintenance and Workflow Optimization
First, aircraft manufacturer have trouble monitoring the health of aircraft systems with health prognostics and deliver predictive maintenance insights. Second, aircraft manufacturer wants a solution that can provide an in-context advisory and align job assignments to match technician experience and expertise.
Case Study
Aerospace & Defense Case Study Airbus
For the development of its new wide-body aircraft, Airbus needed to ensure quality and consistency across all internal and external stakeholders. Airbus had many challenges including a very aggressive development schedule and the need to ramp up production quickly to satisfy their delivery commitments. The lack of communication extended design time and introduced errors that drove up costs.
Case Study
Developing Smart Tools for the Airbus Factory
Manufacturing and assembly of aircraft, which involves tens of thousands of steps that must be followed by the operators, and a single mistake in the process could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix, makes the room for error very small.
Case Study
Accelerate Production for Spirit AeroSystems
The manufacture and assembly of massive fuselage assemblies and other large structures generates a river of data. In fact, the bill of materials for a single fuselage alone can be millions of rows of data. In-house production processes and testing, as well as other manufacturers and customers created data flows that overwhelmed previous processes and information systems. Spirit’s customer base had grown substantially since their 2005 divestiture from Boeing, resulting in a $41 billion backlog of orders to fill. To address this backlog, meet increased customer demands and minimize additional capital investment, the company needed a way to improve throughput in the existing operational footprint. Spirit had a requirement from customers to increase fuselage production by 30%. To accomplish this goal, Spirit needed real-time information on its value chain and workflow. However, the two terabytes of data being pulled from their SAP ECC was unmanageable and overloaded their business warehouse. It had become time-consuming and difficult to pull aggregate data, disaggregate it for the needed information and then reassemble to create a report. During the 6-8 hours it took to build a report, another work shift (they run three per day) would have already taken place, thus the report content was out-of-date before it was ever delivered. As a result, supervisors often had to rely on manual efforts to provide charts, reports and analysis.
