Chevron Aircraft Maintenance based at Prestwick Aerospace provides complete aerospace solutions for the aircraft maintenance industry.
The Challenge
Chevron potentially had the opportunity for a new contract. However, this was dependent on them having the ability to fit an Airbus A330 and a Boeing 737-8 side by side in their hangar. Keen not to miss out on the opportunity, they approached us for help with digital asset creation and visualisations to confirm they had the hangar capacity required.
The Solution
We carried out a laser scan and modelling of the hangar to create a digital asset of the facility, showing it was indeed possible to house both aircraft at the same time, allowing Chevron to win the contract. The trickier part was then to work out how to manoeuvre the aircraft within the hangar.
Using visualisations, we worked with Chevron to try a few different configurations. With the preferred solution found, Chevron’s Maintenance Manager used a VR headset to walk around the planes in VR at a 1:1 scale, allowing him to see how close the planes would be, and check access for steps, access platforms, scissor-lifts, fork-lifts, etc. required to carry out the aircraft maintenance. Using the “human-in-loop” simulator, he was able to drive the tug and practise positioning the planes in the virtual hanger.
“Having access to the ADVS services not only allowed us to respond quickly to accepting the new contract, but also saved a considerable amount of time and effort in finding the right configuration for the aircraft. Using VR, we were able to try different parking positions in a matter of minutes, rather than spend hours manoeuvring and re-parking the real aircraft, which would have lost us up to a whole day of production.”
Mike Stewart, Director of Maintenance