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; the floor space and resources being over-committed.
The Boeing Company uses Aurora to prioritize factory production of its Boeing 787 Dreamliner™ commercial airliner and other commercial aircraftby 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.
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.
Aurora is being leveraged by General Dynamics Electric Boat (EB) for the scheduling of various aspects of submarine construction.
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.
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.
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.
The US Navy selected Aurora-CCPM™ software to schedule submarine maintenance operations at the Naval Submarine Support Facility (NSSF) in New London, Connecticut.
Aurora helps Bombardier schedule their airplane assembly operations more quickly, so they can handle production rate changes and component delivery delays more effectively.
Aurora schedules the use of floor space and other resources at the Space Station Processing Facility, the world’s largest low-particle clean room.
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 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.