Customer Success Story: Delta Air Lines

Ken Lorow, Manager, TechOps Technology & Innovations, Engineering from Delta Airlines, explains how Descartes RFID technology is helping the air carrier manage equipment and inventory.

Delta’s journey began its journey with RFID with tracking aircraft wheels. The airline was challenged to track this critical part and needed to ensure they had enough wheels on hand to fulfill operational needs. They implemented RFID for airplane wheels to help ensure backfilling and to maintain inventory levels.

After that initial successful use case, Delta expanded RFID to other logistics issues, such as tool tracking. Ken Lorow explains, “On the logistics side of the house, [RFID] was a very easy [use case] to track parts. [The Descartes solution] ties into the tool system knowing where the parts are, such as the circuit breaker collars. If you lose one, you're able to use RFID to locate it. Every part is critical to the operation… and could cause a shutdown or delay.”

“There's a bin flag that allows you to order parts. In the past, you'd have to go around, write them on a piece of paper, and then go order. This was upgraded to barcode scans, but if there wasn't a human to do these barcode scans, then you could be without parts for a long time.”

“Now, with RFID, you can walk in a room, and in 30 seconds to 2 minutes, depending on the size of that area, [the technology] automatically orders the parts, gets those parts back into the pipeline, and on-site a lot faster.”

“We work together as a partnership, and we have a very good community in the RFID space. It is the shared knowledge that we have among our teams that works so well for us. There are so many opportunities ahead of us, whether it's engine shop tracking, component shop tracking, engine stand tracking, or BLE— it’s exciting for us for future use cases.”

“I'm excited about where Descartes takes us in the future for BLE and RFID. Down the path, this opens up more and more opportunities for Delta Airlines. There are a lot of creative minds that work at Delta Airlines that can think of how Descartes can help, and how Delta can partner with Descartes going forward. I'm excited about the very near future and the long-term future working with Descartes.”

Headquartered in Atlanta, Delta operates significant hubs and key markets in Amsterdam, Atlanta, Bogota, Boston, Detroit, Lima, London-Heathrow, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New York-JFK and LaGuardia, Paris-Charles de Gaulle, Salt Lake City, Santiago (Chile), Sao Paulo, Seattle, Seoul-Incheon and Tokyo.

As the leading global airline, Delta's mission to connect the world creates opportunities, fosters understanding and expands horizons by connecting people and communities to each other and to their own potential.

Learn more at www.delta.com