GE Aerospace bets on AI, sees big success finding talent in India

Working on innovative aircraft engine technologies, GE Aerospace is using artificial intelligence to explore design space much more efficiently and ensure improved predictability for maintenance of engines, according to a senior company official.

And the 25-year-old John F Welch Technology Centre (JFWTC) in Bengaluru, one of the company's largest integrated multi-disciplinary research and development centres outside the US, is a key contributor in the aerospace major's innovative and sustainable solutions.

As Alok Nanda, Chief Technology Officer of GE Aerospace in India, puts it, all the engines launched or certified by GE since the inception of this centre have an imprint from the team in Bengaluru, and the company had "great success with finding talent in India".

The team has more than 1,000 aviation technology patents to its credit, besides contributions to the design, development, and certification of CFM LEAP, GEnx, and GE9X engines that power wide-body and narrow-body commercial planes.

In an interview with PTI, Nanda, who has been associated with the centre since its inception in 2000, said anything and everything that they do today is getting influenced by artificial intelligence (AI), which he described as a "game changer".

From exploring design spaces to maintenance and everything in between, it is a full spectrum of AI deployment that is being envisioned, he added.

Elaborating further, Nanda said the company has used AI, along with several physics-based tools, to determine the maintenance interval for engines based on their operations.

"Analytics-Based Maintenance (ABM) gives our customers predictability of when their engines need to go for maintenance, based on how they have operated their engine and in which environment they've operated the engines... that is the downstream," he said, adding that AI is also being used in engine inspection technology.

The Bengaluru centre has an Aerospace Services Technology Lab (ASTL) that works on ways to use AI to transform aircraft engine maintenance.

And on the upstream, AI is being used to explore a lot of design space for engines in order to have better optimisation.

In India, more than 1,000 GE and CFM engines power aircraft of Indian carriers.

CFM International, an equal joint venture between GE Aerospace and Safran Aircraft Engines, is also leading the Revolutionary Innovation for Sustainable Engines (RISE) technology development and demonstration programme.

The programme, in which the Bengaluru team is also involved, aims to improve the fuel efficiency of engines by more than 20 per cent.

Meanwhile, the engineers at the Bengaluru centre are also supporting the development of hybrid electric propulsion systems and alternative fuels testing, among other areas.

"We have been extremely successful in leveraging the talent base from India for GE Aerospace... since the inception of our centre, every aircraft engine that GE has launched or certified and is flying has an imprint from this centre. So, I think that talent-wise, there is no better place than India to find talent, and we have had great success with finding talent in India," Nanda said.

For him, it is the "enthusiasm" of the team in India that is special.

"The team is not afraid to try out new things, the team is not afraid to go the distance... this enthusiasm... that is very special. I am not saying that I have not seen it in other parts, I am saying that I have seen loads of it in India. This is a special thing that we have, that has allowed us to have meaningful patents in a sustainable manner and to get to a 1,000 in these (25) years is no mean thing," he said.

When it comes to nurturing talent, the centre has been running the Edison Engineering Development Programme (EEDP) and just launched GE Aerospace Foundation's Next Engineers, a college-readiness programme, which seeks to encourage young people to pursue careers in engineering.

With over 1,000 patents and continuing work on various cutting-edge technologies, on what's next, Nanda has the simple answer, "the next is inventing the future of flight, which is so exciting".

"We are fully committed to inventing the future of flight, so that the world gets more sustainable engines, customers get better products, and we enjoy this journey of innovation," he signed off.