Dr. Airil Seet, Functional and Vibration Lead Engineer, Whole Engine Design, speaks of the benefit of Smart Discovery: “As a lead investigator, the heart of any root cause investigation is the evidence and the data being gathered, consolidated, analysed and interrogated. This task can be overwhelming particularly with complex multi-variant problems that has a multitude of drivers creating the problem. This is where I find Smart Discovery extremely useful to provide me and my team insights to the root cause investigation. It helped me to eliminate suspected features and highlight features or areas for the team to focus on in an efficient and easy to use manner without the need to be a data scientist. I am now able to use the tool independently to investigate new issues. In a way, Smart Discovery is not just an analytical tool but a game changer. It changes the way traditional investigators investigate and think. In uncertain and troubled times such as what we are all facing today, Smart Discovery tool is indeed a refreshing change that we need for our industry.”
Sensing opportunities elsewhere in the company, we reached out to colleagues from Engine Health Monitoring (EHM). With a high volume of engine performance data to analyse, backlogs can occur quickly, with disruptive repercussions to customers. All that changed with Smart Discovery, which made the engineers’ work much more efficient. In three separate investigations, Smart Discovery was able to pinpoint the same root causes that were previously identified manually by the experts, shortening weeks of manual effort into minutes. In some cases, Smart Discovery reduces the number of false positives, saving time that would otherwise be spent to investigate irrelevant candidate root causes.
Smart Discovery won high praise from our EHM colleagues who have been using it on engines on active fleets, pre-empting future flight disruptions with a projected cost avoidance in the multi-millions over five years. Dr. Zhuo Li, Services Analytical Specialist – EHM (Civil Aerospace) at Rolls-Royce UK, said, “We are able to use this tool to automate processes such as picking the correct parameters and grouping the plots to identify key features. Smart Discovery was also designed to help solve complex issues, like high dimensional correlations and interpretable predictive models, and has reduced investigation times by weeks and months.”
We have now established a community of Smart Discovery practitioners across Rolls-Royce. In 2020, more SMEs have familiarised themselves with the solution to a point where they can perform independent investigations. New users that have come onboard include Rolls-Royce Electrical and Defence businesses. We have also started migrating the tool to Microsoft Azure so that more colleagues across our global network can benefit from its use.