Case Study: Rolls‑Royce achieves scalable, actionable insights to optimize engine maintenance and reduce costs with Microsoft Power BI

Rolls-Royce and Microsoft collaborate to create new digital capabilities

Rolls‑Royce, the global aircraft‑engine manufacturer and TotalCare service provider, was overwhelmed by rapidly growing volumes of sensor and operational data and needed to turn terabytes of signals into timely, actionable insight to reduce aircraft‑on‑ground (AOG) time and optimize fuel usage. To tackle this big‑data challenge, Rolls‑Royce partnered with Microsoft Power BI and the broader Microsoft Azure platform (including Azure IoT solution accelerators and Cortana Intelligence Suite) to aggregate, model and visualize disparate telemetry, maintenance and weather data.

Using Azure services for ingestion and analytics and Microsoft Power BI for reporting and dashboards, Rolls‑Royce can now rapidly create compelling visualizations, detect operational anomalies with machine learning, and deliver targeted recommendations to the right stakeholders. The solution enables component‑condition‑based maintenance and fuel‑performance analysis—capabilities that can cut disruption and costs (even a 1% fuel improvement can save airlines millions and small reductions in AOG time translate into significant savings)—and Microsoft Power BI has materially accelerated Rolls‑Royce’s ability to communicate insights and drive customer decisions.

Rolls-Royce

Richard Beesley

Senior Enterprise Architect Data Services