Successful Commercialization through SBIR

By Chuck Marx, SkyThread Chief Strategy Officer

Note: this post is part of a 52-week series Chuck is posting about digital aviation. This post is Week 7.

You’ve heard the phrase popularized by President John F. Kennedy – “a rising tide lifts all boats” – It applies in the commercialization of advanced technologies in a large way. NASA has been a pioneer in the support for commercialization of its innovations developed within the US space program for quite some time. Some of the things we take for granted today were developed in that manner, such as artificial limbs, aircraft anti-icing systems, correcting for GPS signal errors, OpenStack, powdered lubricant, scratch-resistant lenses, solar cells, and structural analysis software. NASA and other research funding programs within the US defense industry have been involved in over 2,000 commercialization efforts of technology designed within the space and defense programs... 

Add "blockchain for aircraft parts supply chain" to that list!

Our friends and peers at SIMBA Chain in Indiana announced a weeks ago that it had been awarded a $30 million blockchain STRATFI deployment contract with the U.S. Air Force (USAF). This award follows multiple projects the company completed for the USAF in recent years under the SBIR program. This new award will focus on the development and deployment of blockchain applications in supply chain management for the USAF. (1)

“Through STRATFI, the USAF is sending a strong demand signal for blockchain technology.  Given the interconnectedness of the DOD supply chain, it also signals an opportunity to collaborate and increase adoption within the commercial industry.” says Bryan Ritchie, CEO of SIMBA Chain.  Nearly all the commercial suppliers of aircraft parts supply both the commercial aviation and defense aircraft industries. “Many successful aircraft platforms also operate as tactical derivative aircraft in both humanitarian, peacekeeping, and defense missions. Once the technology works on one side of the aftermarket, it will work on the other side as well” says Chuck Marx, Chief Strategy Officer for SkyThread. 

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs encourage domestic small businesses to engage in Federal Research and Development with the potential for commercialization. Through a competitive awards-based program, SBIR and STTR enable small businesses to explore their technological potential and proceed to commercialization. By including qualified small businesses in the nation's R&D arena, high-tech innovation is stimulated, and the United States gains entrepreneurial spirit as it meets its specific research and development needs.

SIMBA will build blockchain apps so that supply chain management is easier to track. Alongside the USAF, SIMBA is proposed to do the same for the Navy, Army, and the Defense Logistics Agency.

“Once blockchain renders a data record for an aircraft part immutable, the data in the supply chain can be traced, following its journey between different entities. This not only increases transparency, but it significantly reduces costs resulting from auditing, compliance, and bureaucratic paperwork." The airlines, for example, maintain staffs of dozens of people that handle these forensics work on incoming aircraft parts and parts removed from their aircraft.

“If we can do it for the military, we can do it for anybody. It’s given us great credibility.” SIMBA Chain CEO Bryan Ritchie

In June 2020, SIMBA secured a $1.5 million contract to develop blockchain-based supply chain logistics for the USAF. The project started with running a Hyperledger Fabric node at Oklahoma’s Tinker Air Force Base, known as the hub for Air Force logistics.  SIMBA and the USAF have been working in the R&D and exploration phases of this work, while others have been running in parallel with many of the commercial aerospace blockchain initiatives underway around the world tackling unique use cases in support of the huge commercial aviation supply chain.

Retired USAF General Levy adds - “In the global economy of the 21st Century, blockchains are non-negotiable to secure national security supply chains and component pedigrees around the world in a contested environment where nations will challenge us first in economic competition to erode national security. This is the critical intersection of national economics, national security and the future of our Allied Air and Space success for both national defense and commercial aviation safety.” Lee K. Levy II, Former Commanding General, USAF Sustainment Command and current Defense Thread Senior Advisor

SIMBA developed its platform using Hyperledger Fabric, an open-source and modular blockchain framework. However, all the nodes are permissioned, so all participants can be vetted. As such, both Walmart and Amazon have been using Hyperledger Fabric for their blockchain needs as well. SkyThread is using the same platform ‘architecture in its blockchain enabled solution called SkyThread for Parts.

In a related effort, Boeing required extensive manpower to sync data from multiple sources on production planning for the F/A-18 aircraft, working with over 700 different tables across four data warehouses. These disjointed systems created potential security risks throughout the production process. As a result, Boeing and SIMBA built a fully integrated supply chain solution capable of tracking F/A-18 wing parts from sub-tier suppliers.

The blockchain-based solution aggregates this data, creating an immutable, transparent supply chain platform for F/A-18 wing parts. The solution increases visibility, enables ongoing data tracking in real-time, and improves trust across stakeholders. Since the early stages of the project, this improved functionality has reduced costly paperwork by 40%, dramatically improving the traceability of each aircraft component. (2)

(1)   See the press release on this award at https://simbachain.com/news/simba-chain-awarded-30m-u-s-air-force-stratfi/

(2)   See the full story on the SIMBA website at Boeing | SIMBA Chain

Back in the commercial aircraft parts ecosystems, SkyThread for Parts in Commercial Aircraft is launched. For more information, see my SkyThread article series on LinkedIn. In the first week of the series, I included a history of how we’ve come to realize there is a better way to achieving what we call “Data for the Life of the Aircraft”. We’ve all been working with blockchain to develop ways to use this technology to achieve the industry business needs for data transparency. In the 2nd week, I included a short post on Lessons Learned in Blockchain. Now we’re making progress and working with over a dozen companies around the world in their respective parts and plane ecosystems to achieve “breakthrough” results. Here are the links to the subsequent articles.