Lufthansa Technik Middle East (LTME) and Sanad , the global aerospace engineering and leasing solutions leader wholly-owned by Mubadala Investment Company PJSC (Mubadala), has signed a Technology Collaboration Agreement to develop innovation and technology solutions to digitalize Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) operations within the aviation industry.

The purpose behind the agreement, which was signed during this week’s Dubai Airshow 2021, which concludes at Dubai World Central on November 18, is for LTME and Sanad to support growing digitalization requirements of MRO businesses by investing in research and development as they prepare for a digitalized future.

Both partners intend to use digital capabilities such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Virtual Reality (VR) to digitalize their MRO processes and optimize their overall market offerings. In line with the UAE’s strategic initiative “Operation 300bn”and its focus on deploying Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies, the two companies aim to streamline their maintenance processes through these digital capabilities by developing and implementing digital solutions set to reduce turnaround times and costs, ultimately to better serve their end-customers.

“Our collaboration with Lufthansa Technik has identified common areas of improvement across MRO processes, and this agreement will seek to address these by reducing turnaround times.” Mansoor Janahi, [Deputy Group] CEO, Sanad said. “The partnership plays a vital role in enhancing our processes and will enable our teams to be able to support a greater number of customer projects and maintain our position as a leading global MRO service provider.”

“In the expected return of the MRO business to post-COVID growth, digitalization will play a decisive role,” said Ziad al Hazmi, Chief Executive Officer of LTME. “Therefore, we are proud to join forces with Sanad in order to jointly advance our capabilities in this field even further. I am confident that this new cooperation will not only improve our competitiveness, but will also open up whole new possibilites and capabilities for MROs in the Middle East. And most importantly, it will soon also yield the first benefits for our valued local and international customers.”

The collaboration with Sanad, and use of new technological tools should help LTME digitalize MRO processes and eliminate redundant ones, along with regulatory approvals for remote inspection; ultimately leading to a more timely exchange of information.

LTME’s contribution to the collaboration can build on Lufthansa Technik Group’s long-standing experience in the digitalization of MRO processes, that in the past already stretched from advanced robotics and virtual as well as augmented reality to private networking, artifical intelligence and predictive algorithms, just to name a few.