Cyber-physical internet shipment execution protocols for aviation maintenance, repair and overhaul intralogistics

Aviation maintenance, repair, and overhaul logistics (MRO logistics) indicates the timely delivery of spare parts to ensure normal aircraft maintenance operations. MRO logistics is complex due to a wide variety of parts and global logistics management of parts. MRO logistics is among parts manufacturers, cross-border delivery and intralogistics of MRO organisations. Currently, MRO logistics faces the challenges of information delay and information gaps among various stakeholders. This work organises MRO logistics into Cyber-Physical Internet (CPI), borrowing concepts from the Internet, such as network configuration and TCP/IP. To simplify global MRO logistics, this work first defines multi-level network configuration for first-leg logistics, cross-border logistics and last-leg logistics, respectively. Second, this work virtualises the logistics infrastructures, such as parts, workers, and logistics equipment. Since MRO logistics involves both material flow and data flow, it is different from the Internet, which only has data flow. Third, this study designs a layered architecture to organise the planning, scheduling, and execution decisions systematically to achieve end-to-end communication among various participants in MRO logistics. Especially as the last leg of MRO logistics, MRO intralogistics contains complex logistics operations to ensure the timely delivery of parts for maintenance jobs inside an MRO organisation. This work further designs a catchment area network for MRO intralogistics (CAN-MRO). In analogy to tables in computer networking, the study uses tables to format the logistics data because of their simplicity and operability. This work designs the execution protocols to reduce execution uncertainties, such as absent workers and shortage of equipment. The proposed Cyber-Physical Internet for MRO logistics, including network configuration, architecture, CAN-MRO and the corresponding execution protocols, realise flexible and efficient logistics management.