Proceedings of the 2017 Gas Turbine India Conference

GTIndia2017
December 7-8, 2017, Bangalore, India

DRAFT GTIndia2017-4690

DATA ANALYTICS TO IMPROVE FIRST PASS YIELD OF AERO-ENGINE

COMPONENTS THROUGH NATURAL LANGUAGE PROCESSING ALGORITHM

Gowtham Dronamraju Ibrahim Mohammad

Cyient Ltd Cyient Ltd
Hyderabad, Telangana, India Hyderabad, Telangana, India
Gowtham.Dronamraju@Cyient.com Ibrahim.Mohammad@Cyient.com

Koti Reddy Avuthu Suresh Babu Verala Ameer Jillella

Cyient Ltd Cyient Ltd Cyient Ltd
Hyderabad, Telangana, India Hyderabad, Telangana, India Hyderabad, Telangana, India
Kotireddy.Avuthu@Cyient.com Sureshbabu.Verala@Cyient.com Ameer.Jillella@Cyient.com

ABSTRACT
In aerospace manufacturing industry, historical data plays an
important role in understanding vital process parameters, and in
helping the quality personnel analyze the process performance
using statistical tools. Operations managers use advanced
analytics to take a deep dive into historical process data, identify
patterns and relationships among discrete process steps and
inputs, and then optimize the factors that prove to have the
greatest effect on yield. Quality analyst’s use isolated data sets,
aggregate, and analyze them to reveal important insights. Data
analytics and Big Data are novel tools used when there is large
amount of data and the conventional data processing tools cannot
process and give meaningful results to improve process
efficiencies and help predict possible failures in future by
identifying the trends and patterns. This paper discusses a case
study on using Data Analytics to improve First Pass Yield (FPY)
of aerospace parts by using a Natural Language Processing and
parsing algorithms that recognizes review comments entered by
quality inspectors who enters First article inspection data in their
own colloquial language which will be difficult to process
manually and through conventional software tools. Data
analytics has been used in this project because there are multiple
components, dimensions and supplier involved and it is
relatively tedious and nearly impossible to process the data and
take decisions using conventional methods. First pass yield
(FPY) is also known as Throughput Yield (TPY). It is the ratio
of number of units coming out of a process to the number of units
going into that process over a specified period of time. Only good
units with no rework or scrap are counted. In this project, the first
pass yield has been improved using data analytics.
Keywords: Data analytics (DA), First Article Inspection
Report (FAIR), First Pass Yield (FPY), Natural Language
Processing (NLP), Production Pre-Approval Process (P-PAP),
Machine Learning, Big Data.
LITERATURE SURVEY
Application of Data Analytics and Big Data has been
increasingly made in manufacturing and aerospace industry
since early 21st century, majorly to monitor and analyze flight
and engine performance [1]. This technology has been helping
the airline operators and OEMs to monitor the status of fleet
operations and condition of critical parts in the aircraft engine
through live data recording. This data will be stored and analyzed
by computing systems, to take precautionary and proactive
maintenance measures and ensure seamless flight operations.
This technology been termed as live flight health monitoring [2]
system.
Data analytics is also being used in the air traffic
management system [3]. Boeing Research and Technology
(BR&T), Advanced Air Traffic Management (AATM) built a
system that makes predictions based upon descriptive patterns of
massive aviation traffic data and that helps the operators use best
routes to eliminate air traffic issues.
But very less research has been done on applying data
analytics on manufacturing part quality management in

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aerospace manufacturing and dimensional analysis area.
Conventional tools such as six sigma analysis and other
statistical analyses have still been used to monitor quality metrics
and process performance.
BACKGROUND
With the advent of multi-tier supplier system and
outsourcing in aerospace sector, usually consists of multitude of
parts (close to 3000 unique parts for a typical aero-engine),
multiple manufacturing vendors, and multiple countries and
cultures, makes inspection methods complex for OEMs to certify
vendors and monitor vendor process performances. Hence, this
scenario is leading OEMs to develop special and automated
systems to monitor quality of their inward parts. Though OEMs
have a standardized Production Pre-Approval Process (P-PAP),
Process and Product Failure Mode Effect Analysis (PFMEA) and
other methodologies to perform vendor certification, this has
only been limited to top level process certification assessment
and approval and is currently a manual and time consuming
process.
Quality inspectors use comments written in their own
colloquial language in the inspection reports and this makes it
difficult and further manual effort to categorize those comments
into defect categories. This can be automated using Data
Analytics using Natural Language processing (NLP) which is a
new age data mining technology. This technology uses semantic
rules to recognize natural language dialects and demographic
language differences and translates it to a common standardized
format to use it for analytics purposes. Currently NLP has been
extensively used in speech recognition, social media trend
analysis and other related fields. This technology has still not
been leveraged in manufacturing automation.
This paper deals with application of analytics in First
Article Inspection (FAI) of complex aero engine parts where the
applicability of analytics has been used to reduce the human
efforts in analyzing common defect comments provided by
quality inspectors and shop floor operators, which will otherwise
be very difficult to segregate these comments written in their
colloquial language and categorize these errors to take insightful
decisions on accepting/rejecting the parts.
INTRODUCTION
Data analytics (DA) is the science of examining
raw data with the purpose of drawing conclusions about that
information. Big Data is extremely large data sets that may be
analyzed computationally to reveal patterns, trends, and
associations, especially relating to human behavior and
interactions, mostly unstructured data. Machine learning (ML) is
the subfield of computer science that gives computers the ability
to learn without being explicitly programmed. Natural language
processing (NLP) is a field of computer science, artificial
intelligence and computational linguistics and a subset of
Machine Learning (ML) concerned with the interactions
between computers and human (natural) languages, and, in
particular, concerned with programming computers to fruitfully
process large natural language corpora.
Challenges in natural language processing frequently
involve natural language understanding, natural language
generation (frequently from formal, machine-readable logical
forms), connecting language and machine perception, managing
human-computer dialog systems etc.
Text Parsing, syntax analysis or syntactic analysis is the
process of analyzing a string of symbols, either in natural
language or in computer languages, conforming to the rules of a
formal grammar.
FPY is also known as Throughput Yield.
1. Ratio of number of units coming out of a process to the
number of units going into that process over a specified
period of time.
2. Only good units with no rework or scrap are counted
First Article Inspection Report (FAIR) is a formal method of
providing a measurement report for a given manufacturing
process.
1. The method consists of measuring the properties and
geometry of an initial sample items against given
specifications, for example a drawing.
2. Contains all Key Characteristics of the part
3. Comments written by inspectors which needs to be
categorized and revivified to ensure vendor process
certification.
WHY DATA ANALYTICS AND BIG DATA
Though conventional tools can suffice most of the common
defect tracking requirements and act as metrics generating tools,
it has become tedious to manage huge amount of databases and
requirement to have a new logic and algorithm to address new
variety of problems. Some of the problems and challenges that
make the use of Data Analytics and Big Data technology in our
particular scenario are:
1. Multitude of Vendors (Multi-Tier)
2. Multiple data sources (Electronic systems, ERP records,
Physical documents)
3. Multiple Data Types (FAI, Production Data)
4. Comments written by customers in colloquial language
which needs to be interpreted
5. Necessity to develop predictive models to take preventive
measures and avoid catastrophic process failures
Conventional statistical techniques such as SPC, CPK and
Six-Sigma etc. cannot process the voluminous unstructured data
when the data is multi-dimensional and multi-variant
Therefore, Data analytics can be used to
1. Predict component/manufacturing performance through Big
data
2 Copyright © 2017 by ASME
2. Identify Patterns in which a part/system could fail to meet
quality stipulations
3. Help customers to take preventive measures to fix the issues
before they occur.

CONVENTIONAL METHOD
Conventional or manual process consists of OEMs using
voluminous FAI reports with the inspectors providing comments
on each critical characteristic for each part. A team of
manufacturing engineers and analysts consolidate these reports
and analyze each comment written in the language accustomed
by the inspector and categorize these comments into specific
defect categories. Then these categories will be prioritized using
Pareto charts and necessary action to prevent these defects in the
parts will be taken. Because segregation is a manual process,
there is a great chance of the analyst missing some of the
categories and hence the process efficiency or the First Pass
Yield (FPY) using this process will be comparatively low.
Besides this, this process is a time consuming process and greatly
depends on analyst’s knowledge on the manufacturing process
and the quality of time that the analyst spends on each report.
Figure 1 shows a flowchart that represents a conventional
methodology of error categorization based on inspector’s
comments in FAI reports.
Figure 2. Sample comments written by operators in colloquial
language
Why comments can’t be standardized at the inspector level.
Quality inspectors are specialized skilled personnel who spend
most of their time in learning and understanding and identifying
the defect groups. Moreover, every FAI inspector has his own
perspective and comes from varied cultural background.
Therefore, for the same error, two different FAI inspectors write
inspection comments in two different ways.
Data analytics can be used in the below scenarios
1. When it involves higher costs and higher number of
manpower for FAI data verification and categorization
manually.
2. When it involves higher costs for trainings the QC
personnel to verify and categorization defect comments
data written in colloquial language
Table 1 shows a sample cost analysis of a typical aero
engine FAI process. As seen, the costs are enormously high
considering the volume of parts and number of vendors.

Average number of parts in a

~ 3000
typical aero engine

No. of Tier -1 Vendors ~ 400

No. of Tier – 2, 3,4.. suppliers ~ 500

No. of Unique Nationalities of the

~7
suppliers

=3000*400*500*7*
Figure 1. Conventional process to recognize error categories Total training costs (USD) Time for training*
and compilation of process improvement reports Training Cost Per Hour

Therefore, there is a great scope to automate the above Table 1. Sample Cost analysis
process in order to leverage the time and improvements in FPY.
Figure 2 is a snapshot of typical comments written in the Criteria for Success
inspector’s colloquial language, 1. Cost of Training > Cost of implementing Data
Analytics

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 2. Cost of Number of QC personnel > Cost of
implementing data analytics
Typical Error Types
 Customer Approval Verification Error
 Part Revision Error
 Wrong Process Specification
 Certificate Error
 Wrong Material
 Bubble Missing
 Supplier Code missing
 Wrong bubble numbers
 Drawing revision error
 Missing in parts list
 Missing Specs
 PO number missing
 Wrong reference location
 Wrong tolerance
Typical Error Categories
 Typo Errors
 Dimension Errors
 Missing certificates
 Incorrect certificates
 Missing Engineering Attributes
 Supplier planning errors
Figure 3. Automated FAI inspections using Data Analytics
AUTOMATED PROCESS
Algorithm for Natural Language Processing (NLP) for First
ALGORITHM
Article Inspection (FAI) reports [4] has been used to automate
An algorithm based on text parsing technique has been
the FAI inspection report verification purposes.
developed to categorize the comment categories as shown in
Figure 4.
The process involves the below steps
1. Summarize blocks of text
2. Create a bot to detect the dialect
3. Automatically generate keyword tags
4. Identify the type of entity extracted
5. Identify the sentiment of a string of text
6. Reduce words to their root

Figure 3 depicts in detail the automated process which uses

natural language processing technique to replace the
conventional process mentioned in Figure 1.

CASE STUDY
A sample customer comment has been identified to process
it using NLP. This comment will then be processed using the
algorithm to understand how the processor categorizes it using
Data analytics.
E.g.: “Attached Mollear Certificate (Cert#ZZZ1234) for
NASKKKU112234 is of B023456923. Please clarify on the
change of part number.”

Figure 4. Flowchart for Text Parsing and Natural language

processing [6]

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 A sample text has been taken from the comments database Processing of Queries:
and a step by step methodology has been written to drill down All the semantics queries generated through step 4 will be
using text parsing algorithm has been given below then processed into a database and stored in categories for further
processing as per the users requirement.
Step 1 This further processing can be in the form of a consolidated
Input Sentence: metric, a graphical interface that represents the type of error per
“Attached Mollear Certificate (Cert#ZZZ1234) for customer, per part wise etc. This can be done using latest
NASKKKU112234 is of B023456923. Please clarify on the analytical tools such as Tableau and Hadoop etc.
change of part number.”
APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT
Step 2 Data analytics tool development to identify and prioritize
Morphological processing: defect categories vendor wise, defect type wise etc. as shown in
Identify the language and dialect: Colloquial United States Figures 6, 7 & 8.
English.

Step 3
Syntax analysis (Parsing):
This step uses lexicon and grammar of the language identified in
the step 2 and identifies the key words. It primarily identifies the
nouns, verbs and tenses of the given sentence as shown in the
Figure 5.
Noun: Mollear Certificate, NASKKKU112234, B023456923

Figure 6. Graphical interface of errors based on vendors

Figure 5: Syntactic analysis of a simple sentence

Step 4
Semantic analysis:
Semantic analysis uses an interface to a database such as a
language processor to convert sentences in English or any native
language into SQL queries as given in Table 2.

Parts of
Word Semantics Figure 7. Error trend analysis year wise
Speech
Attached Verb λx • attach(x)

Mollear λx •
Noun
Certificate Category.Certerrortype(x)

Cert#ZZZ1234 Noun λx • certificatename(x)

NASLLLU1234 Noun λx • category.partname(x,y)

B023456923 Noun λx • category.partname(x,z)

Figure 8. FPY trend monitoring using analytics

Table 2: Semantic structures produced on analyzing a simple
sentence
Step 5

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DATA ANALYSIS CONCLUSION
Figures 6, 7 & 8 are dynamic in nature and will be auto Using data analytics, a system has been developed that
generated based on the continuous inputs from first article receives input of FAI reports with inspection comments given by
reports. First Pass Yield (FPY) chart has been generated and various inspectors written in their respective colloquial
tracked continuously and necessary preventive actions to languages. The algorithm tracks and classifies the comments into
mitigate the risks from error analysis will be implemented to the predetermined defect classes and consolidates and reports the
control the process trend analysis. Based on the actions taken, the average First Pass
Yield has come down from 50% to 80%
Following are some of the visual tools and metrics developed to
monitor the process FUTURE SCOPE
 Organize Analysis Results This technology can also be used for generating insights and
o By Site automating now mostly manual Shop floor ANDON analysis,
o FPY by Program Warranty Data analysis, On-field part failure analysis, and OEM
 FPY by Supplier inventory tracking etc.
o By Program
 Pareto of Errors by type ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
 Pareto FPY by Suppliers This case study has been developed as a part of initiative
o By Supplier taken by Cyient Ltd to improve manufacturing efficiency of aero
o FPY % by Date engine OEMs using data analytics.
 Pareto of errors
REFERENCES
Root Cause Analysis and Metrics [1] https://www.einfochips.com/blog/big-data-analytics-is-
set-to-redefine-the-future-for-aerospace/
 Suppliers based on FPY %
 Identify high running errors [2] https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/7319
-analytics-and-the-internet-of-things-in-aerospace
 Develop training to improve supplier performance
[3] Predictive analytics with aviation big data/
RISKS IN USING DATA ANALYTICS
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6548556/
Below Table 3 depicts some of the risks identified, their
possible effects and their mitigation plans.
[4] http://blog.algorithmia.com/introduction-natural-
language-processing-nlp/
Risk Effect Mitigation plan
Incorrect [5] www.wikipedia.org/Natural language processing
1. Short term- plan is
inferences
Incorrect data not cost effective.
made by the [6] https://www.scm.tees.ac.uk/isg/aia/nlp/NLP-overview.pdf
supply 2. Long term- redundant
analytical
data can be identified.
model [7] Potter et al, United States Patent # 007409337B1, Natural
Create robust analytical Language Processing Interface
models and apply
Discrete
Interruptions intelligence such that [8] David S. Cochran et al., Manufacturing System Design
graphs will be
in inputs system automatically meets Big Data Analytics for Continuous Improvement;
generated
identifies the noise 26th CIRP Design Conference, Science Direct- Elsevier, P
pattern. 647-652
Change in Cannot use
Upgrade the analytical
customer’s previously [9] Amos H.C. Ng et al, Innovative Design and Analysis of
model within a minimal
existing generated Production Systems by Multi-objective Optimization and
lead time.
processes information Data Mining, 26th CIRP Design Conference, Science
Direct- Elsevier, P 665-671
Table 3: Identification of probable risks that will affect the
efficiency of data

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