Boeing deploys WLAN location tracking to speed up airplane production

It’s easy to lose track of something in the world’s biggest building — even a jumbo jet engine.

Not that this happens often at aerospace giant Boeing, but the company recently deployed a wireless LAN (WLAN) location tracking system to keep tabs on all its high-value components and manufacturing equipment.

“In the factory, the ability to locate major parts and tooling on a timely basis is critical,” says James Farricker, chief network engineer and technical fellow at The Boeing Company.  

Also: Boeing IT architect pushes Secure Mobile Architecture

Doing this is difficult at times in Boeing’s Everett, Wash., facility, where 747s, 767s and 777s are built. The plant covers almost 100 acres and encloses 472 million cubic feet, and is the largest building in the world (by volume) according to the Guinness Book of World Records. The site is also where Boeing is readying its 787 “Dreamliner” super-jumbo jets, with production scheduled to roll this summer.

In advance of the 787 project, and to speed up production of its other aircraft lines, Boeing’s IT group last year began installing wireless location tracking. The technology will allow engineers to find and assemble the collection of airplane parts and tools — known as kits — more quickly than before, and allow for better inventory tracking.

“It will streamline our production environment and make it more efficient time-wise and dollar-wise by not having to replicate tooling and pieces of gear,” Farricker adds.

Tagging technology

The idea to physically track the location of factory assets using an 802.11 network originated in the company’s PhantomWorks R&D group. The idea at the time was to use the existing Cisco Aironet WLAN installed in the factories to do the physical tag tracking.

“Even with fairly big parts, you’d be surprised how easy it is to lose track of stuff,” says Richard Paine, a network technologist with the PhantomWorks Math and Computing Technologies division.

The location tracking for assets in the factory is more selective than slapping an RFID chip on every wrench and bolt. The 802.11 active tags, which are about the size of a book of matches, and contain batteries and circuitry, cost $45 to $60 a piece. The tags are put only on components and tools that are “valuable enough so that we don’t mind putting an active tag on them,” Paine says. Boeing uses tag products from Aeroscout, along with the vendor’s WLAN tracking servers and software.

Everything from lifts, cranes, jet engines and planes fuselage parts are tagged with these 802.11 active tags. These units constantly relay the position of whatever they are attached to, using one of two types of technology: Received Strength Signal Indicator (RSSI) and Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA).

RSSI lets an 802.11 network physically track an object by measuring the strength of the signal against three points, then using that triangulation to get the exact position. TDOA uses similar triangulation of a WLAN tag, but a time-stamp technique is to pinpoint location. A location tracking server provides a real-time view of where everything is, and where it has been.