CYBER-PHYSICAL INTERNET LOCAL AREA NETWORK FOR AVIATION MAINTENANCE, REPAIR AND OVERHAUL (MRO) INTRALOGISTICS

Aviation maintenance, repair, and overhaul intralogistics (MRO intralogistics) is essential to ensure regular maintenance procedures. MRO intralogistics remains challenging due to its complexity and variability. Many advanced technologies, such as physical Internet (PI) and Internet-of-Things, have been introduced to improve the efficiency of production intralogistics operations in e-commerce and manufacturing. However, MRO intralogistics has rarely been discussed. Motivated by a real-life case, this paper presents an innovative scheme, Cyber-physical Internet (CPI), for MRO intralogistics to address its operational challenges. First, this study introduces CPI, which integrates multiple technologies, including PI, Digital-Twin, Industrial Internet-of-Things and Robotic mobile fulfilment system, for re-engineering MRO intralogistics. CPI-enabled MRO intralogistics ensures the full-process real-time data collection from the MRO intralogistics physical environment. In addition, this work discusses new decision-making problems under CPI-enabled MRO intralogistics. Second, this paper proposes a detailed architecture model, CPI Local Area Network (CPI-LAN), to empower the interoperability of physical and virtual spaces of CPI-enabled MRO intralogistics. Third, this work designs a solution framework based on fuzzy logic and real-time data to coordinate the operational decisions between two participants in MRO intralogistics. The paper contributes to three aspects. First, CPI enhances the traceability and visibility of both operations and resources of MRO intralogistics. Second, the solution framework embedding real-time data synchronizes the operations under CPI-enabled MRO intralogistics. Third, this work conducts the proposed solution in a real-life case and shows the potential benefits of CPI-enabled MRO intralogistics.