Knowledge management for propulsion systems integration

Abstract: On the one hand, airlines order new planes and the worldwide fleet increases, while, on the other hand, the market pressure, the rise of fuel prices and other factors contribute to regular changes in the technology. These drivers may impact maintenance activities and support to operators, and the number of issues occurring on in-service aircraft. In-service and production queries are a specific type of support activities followed-up by propulsion systems integration engineers from the aircraft manufacturer, such as Airbus. These technical questions can address any of the engine’s systems and must usually be answered to within a short timeframe as they might delay a flight or the delivery of an airplane. In the global scope of knowledge management inside the company, these engineers realized their loss of not capitalizing these activities and promoted this project. An adapted application has been developed to share the experience among programs and support the engineers for the treatment of such queries. As the focus of the project was put on assessing the actual need of the future users to provide an adapted tool, the database should prove its performance over the long term. This paper details the different steps of the project: analysis of the need, specifications, programming and testing, that led to meeting this specific need for capitalization.