The aerospace industry is strongly pursuing RFID technology for a variety of reasons, including tracking work-in-process, improving productivity and maintenance procedures. On Monday, Boeing, Alaska Airlines and Fujitsu announced that they will partner on a solution to speed up onerous maintenance and safety checks on Alaska Airline aircraft. The pilot program, which will be deployed in Q4,  will document the time savings involved in using RFID to perform normally tedious safety and maintence tests in the cabin of aircraft. The program, called Component Management Optimization,  utilizes RFID tags that store part numbers, serial numbers and maintenance history, which can be updated constantly to create an electronic record that travels with the airplane. When the program is certified, it will be available for use on Boeing and non-Boeing airplanes.

“Our partnership with Boeing reflects our vision of being on the leading edge of the best technology applications that we believe will shape the future airline operations environment,” said Fred Mohr, vice president of maintenance and engineering at Alaska Airlines.

Click here to view a short video about the application.

Click here to view RFID 24-7′s previous coverage of the Boeing Fujitsu announcement.

Click here to view RFID 24-7′s past coverage on RFID and the aerospace sector.