Rolls Promotes Engine Health Monitor

A cutting-edge artificial intelligence service offered by Rolls-Royce to monitor the health of engines can yield airlines savings up to ten times its cost, the company claims.

"This service is very, very significant. It is an enabler of predictive maintenance and our Total Care (guaranteed cost) maintenance programs," says John Cheffins, CEO & president of Rolls-Royce civil aerospace business.

Rolls is just celebrating the first anniversary of a joint venture with Data Systems & Solutions of San Diego, which offers the web-based aeromanager.com predictive services.

"Engine trend monitoring incorporates artificial intelligence to compare our fleet and internal indicators with those of the customer's engine," says Cheffins. "It can be broadcast from the aircraft by live telemetry, downloaded during taxiing, or once the aircraft is parked."

Customers are notified by e-mail or telephone of any anomalies that might require a maintenance action. The result? Better planned maintenance that results in greater utilization of the aircraft, and fewer inflight incidents.

Rolls-Royce itself is a customer of the joint venture, using the service to monitor the fleet of each model of engine.

The partnership in predictive maintenance could be the beginning of a new road for Rolls.

"We are positioning ourselves to be a lot more than an aero engine company," Cheffins says.