Making things smarter is all the rage in manufacturing these days—be it the machines on the assembly line, or the overall plant itself. Rolls-Royce Deutschland (RRD), however, is going one step further. It is focused on developing an IntelligentEngine, which is connected to and aware of other engines, its support ecosystem and its customer airline.
Designing such an engine is a multiyear endeavor that will cost millions of dollars and present numerous challenges to the manufacturer’s engineers. Aware of this, RRD last year implemented Knowledge Works, an artificial intelligence (AI)-based software from Altair Engineering Inc., to extract useful information from terabytes of real-time and historical engineering test data. The goal, according to Peter Wehle, head of innovation, research and testing at RRD, is to use this information to reduce new-engine weight and mass, while maintaining structural integrity.