Blade Repair

GA's simulation tool, Business Simulation Model of Aircraft Repair Technology (B.SMART) is being used in re-engineering the blade repair business practices at the Oklahoma City Air Logistics Center (OC-ALC). B.SMART models all repair activities in the Blade Repair Facility (BRF) and provides a capability to assess current and proposed operations for use in decision analyses, new equipment and facility needs verification, and technology development. B.SMART includes a customized user interface to promote wide-spread use by engineers and OC-ALC management for process and financial assessments. This tool is one of the first development activities of the broader ManTech Blade Repair Program, designed to re-engineer and improve the blade repair business practices at OC-ALC.

The Blade Repair Program is designed to deliver complete solutions for repair challenges at OC-ALC. Information systems are needed to handle the large volumes of data generated and stored for repair management and historical purposes. Currently, these data are manually recorded in log books. A blade repair tracking and reporting system enables process engineers and shop personnel to manage repair data and its use for process improvements. The tracking system also maintains a historical repair database of all HPT blades repaired at OC-ALC.

Blade repair requirements at OC-ALC are changing from Type I repair (inspection, nick, and blend rework) to Type II (complete overhaul). Type II repair is labor intensive and for some jet engine blades, such as high pressure turbine (HPT) blades, the repair procedure to complete a crack repair and squealer tip restoration utilizes over 70 process steps. Automated processes improve the quality, yield, and throughput of many Type II repairs, and reduce repair cost to the Air Force.

The new, automated processes substantially increase throughput, having projected improvement factors of 5 to 6 over manual repair processes. With the current work load at OC-ALC, the U.S. Air Force estimates a payback period, including all non-recurring R&D costs, of less than three years.