Customer Applications
Aurora was originally developed to help NASA tackle difficult, mission-critical scheduling problems that previously required the judgment and experience of expert human schedulers. For example, Aurora was deployed at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center to schedule the use of floor space and other resources at the Space Station Processing Facility (SSPF), one of the world’s largest low-particle clean rooms where International Space Station components are prepared for space flight. Because SSPF processing and launch costs are exceedingly expensive, it is necessary to meet launch dates and utilize SSPF resources efficiently. However, this is very challenging because there are many types of resources, tasks, and non-traditional constraints, generally resulting in the floor space and resources being over-committed.
The Boeing Company uses Aurora to prioritize the factory production of its Boeing 787 Dreamliner™ commercial airliner and other commercial aircraft by balancing resource capacities with manufacturing requirements and constraints. The result is a dynamic assembly schedule that adapts to real-time production variability and allows Boeing to execute the plan as efficiently as possible.
Individual Customer Success Stories
The Boeing Company
The Boeing Company uses Aurora to prioritize production of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner™. Aurora’s dynamic assembly schedule adapts to real-time production variations, so Boeing can produce aircraft as efficiently as possible.
Axiom Space
Axiom Space, a leading provider of human spaceflight services and developer of human-rated space infrastructure, has selected Stottler Henke’s Aurora AI software to manage the schedules of their astronauts during space missions.
General Dynamics Electric Boat
Aurora is being leveraged by General Dynamics Electric Boat (GDEB) for the scheduling of various aspects of submarine construction.
Pfizer Pharmaceutical
At the request of the pharmaceutical industry, Stottler Henke has developed Aurora-ProPlan, a customization of Aurora specifically for pharmaceutical production and project management. Aurora-ProPlan adds capabilities necessary to perform Pharmaceutical production and project management optimally.
Kennedy Space Center
Stottler Henke has worked with and continues to work with NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) to improve KSC’s Ground Processing (GP) scheduling. The solution, Aurora-KSC, has been designed, developed and deployed at KSC to automate a large amount of Kennedy Space Center’s planning, scheduling, and execution decision-making. Aurora-KSC leverages Aurora, the world’s most intelligent scheduling framework.
Air Force Satellite Scheduling
The Aurora intelligent scheduling framework has been applied to Air Force Satellite Control Network (AFSCN) scheduling to create an automatic scheduling and deconfliction capability called the Managed Intelligent Deconfliction and Scheduling for Satellite Communications (MIDAS) that improves Satellite Control Network scheduling by providing automated schedule generation and deconfliction based on the current methods, procedures, and heuristics used by human satellite control network schedulers. MIDAS has been integrated with existing AFSCN software systems and is being transitioned to operational use by AFSCN schedulers. Now Stottler Henke is building on the success of MIDAS by developing Synth, for automating satellite scheduling and deconfliction at individual SOCs, and DICAMPSS, for providing greater sharing and availability of information and knowledge.
Medical School Scheduling
Aurora is used by the Massachusetts General Hospital to schedule its medical residency program. Aurora reduces the time and effort needed to generate schedules and provides better support for the hospital’s complex staffing needs.
Automobile Industry
To optimize a major automobile manufacturer’s vehicles for both nondestructive and crash testing, Stottler Henke customized Aurora with domain-specific heuristics used in the vehicle task planning process.
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), selected Aurora for its unique capabilities including intelligent resource scheduling to improve their project management, including increased throughput and greater project transparency.
Bombardier Learjet
Aurora helps Bombardier schedule their airplane assembly operations more quickly, so they can handle production rate changes and component delivery delays more effectively.
NASA: Space Station Processing Facility
Aurora schedules the use of floor space and other resources at the Space Station Processing Facility, the world’s largest low-particle clean room.
Korea Aerospace Industries
Aurora helps Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) to schedule production of composite parts for Boeing’s Dreamliner.
Alaska Airlines
Pilot training involves a variety of specialized functionality and logic. The scheduling and logic enforcement was historically a slow and painstaking process, with a significant amount of manual cross-checking.
Spirit AeroSystems
Spirit AeroSystems, Inc., the world’s largest first-tier aerostructures manufacturer, leverages Aurora to schedule equipment, labor, and timing for large airplane component sub-assembly for a number of airplanes. The company builds several important pieces of Boeing aircraft, including the fuselage of the 737, portions of the 787 fuselage, and the cockpit section of the fuselage of nearly all of its airliners.
Camcar Textron
Camcar manufactures bolts for aerospace domains. Throughput and quality assurance are both critical in such a domain. The primary resources involved are factory equipment and personnel. A run usually involves setup at a work center (this is optional, depending on what was manufactured on that piece of equipment previously), and a run time that is dependent on an order size. Camcar’s primary considerations are being able to determine accurate ship dates based on order demand and determining what work should be done where in order to maintain efficient production.
Navy MRO Scheduling
The US Navy selected Aurora-CCPM™ software to schedule submarine maintenance operations at the Naval Submarine Support Facility (NSSF) in New London, Connecticut.
Dental Student Scheduling
For New York University (NYU) College of Dentistry, Aurora-DentalResident, Stottler Henke’s AI-Based Intelligent Planning & Scheduling software, is being used to create dental student schedules, including planning and scheduling which students take what courses and accounting for when rotation occurs.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) is using Aurora to accelerate its production of Boeing 787 Composite Wing Boxes.
United Space Alliance
United Space Alliance included Aurora in the design of Temporis, a scheduling system targeted for use by NASA crew members on board next generation spacecraft during deep space missions.
Audit Scheduling
TenA Company, founded in 1982, is the premier mortgage quality control service in the United States, assisting thousands of mortgage lenders each year. Among their carefully vetted personnel are counted Legal & Compliance experts and a QC Solutions team.
NASA: Space Shuttle
Aurora/AMP, in service for 18 years at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, generated short- and long-term (10 year) schedules of ground-based activities that prepared and refurbished Space Shuttles before and after each flight. Rapid scheduling enabled NASA to analyze numerous what-if scenarios efficiently. Aurora/AMP was used until the final space shuttle program concluded.
Story Construction
Story Construction is an Iowa-based, full-service general contractor. Story Construction has chosen Aurora-CCPM to complement its already industry-leading construction project planning and execution capability.