RFID at Line Replaceable Units

The customer is a leading company in the business of Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) of aircraft. The customer has sites throughout Europe, Asia and the United States.

In the past, Line Replaceable Units (LRUs) were often equipped with common labels, which contained information about the unit, such as the unit number. Correct LRU identification required a direct line of sight to the label, and demounting of the units was often necessary. In order to optimize maintenance, additional LRU-relevant information is necessary from a central database. For example, for troubleshooting, information about the unit history is essential. However, direct access to global databases is, of course, not always possible within aircraft.

The Challenge

• Solution must be compliant to interna-tional standards and regulations for RFID
• Maintenance of LRUs is carried out in many different locations around the world
• Necessary information must be stored to the user memory of the RFID transponder
• Access to the information stored on the RFID transponder must be restricted
• Solution must use existing data center infrastructure

The Solution

• Client Application for data, user and RFID handheld device administration
• Integration with existing data center infrastructure (Oracle 9i)
• Bi-directional data synchronization between RFID handheld device and central data base guaranteeing consistency and uniqueness of the LRU information
• Metal transponder optimized for aviation
• 'Data on tag' functionality is used for storing important unit information
• EPCglobal compliant UHF technology ensuring high reading range, even without direct line of sight

The Benefits

The solution leads to an optimization of the entire maintenance process, and has great potential to further decrease costs through time and resource reductions. Additionally, data quality increases because there is no manual transfer of information between paper and electronic forms. Data is electronically transferred from RFID transponders to the Enterprise System and vice versa.

These benefits are achieved through key aspects such as:

• Electronic identification of LRUs without direct line of site
• Additional information stored on RFID transponder without needing a connection to the ERP System
• Use of offline information, which greatly eases the challenge of global time differences
• Use of RFID supports 100% electronically data processing