Gulfstream Digitizing Engineering History

Gulfstream Aerospace is developing a digital database to preserve decades of its aircraft engineering documents. The Savannah, Georgia aircraft manufacturer is converting all records, CAD files, and other documents into machine-readable PDFs, which are then cataloged in a searchable database, dubbed the Aircraft Information Retrieval (AIR) systems.

“This new system will save our engineering, manufacturing, and customer support professionals thousands of working hours,” said Sheryl Bunton, the senior v-p and chief information officer at Gulfstream.

Documents are currently housed in an “engineering vault” stationed in the company’s main manufacturing facility, behind an unmarked door, and maintained by a team of engineering archivists and data analysts. Gulfstream likened the vault room to an “aircraft time capsule,” filled with tubes stacked from floor to ceiling holding seven decades of critical engineering documents, including hand-drawn blueprints of parts, cabin designs, and aircraft drawings.

“You would never know it was here, but it is probably one of the more important rooms in our entire manufacturing facility,” Bunton said. “There are hundreds of thousands of documents, including many of the original drawings from the very early days of Grumman and Gulfstream.”

Required to maintain accurate records for every model tracing back to the Gulfstream I that was first manufactured in 1958, Gulfstream said the goal of the project is to enhance data quality, preserve valuable documents, and improve usability and consistency. “We are always looking for ways to improve how we manage data and become more efficient. AIR not only digitizes hundreds of thousands of records but ensures we preserve this valuable history of our company,” she said.

Gulfstream will continue to preserve its original drawings in the climate-controlled engineering vault. “These drawings are such a valuable part of our company’s history,” she added. “There is something about pulling out an original hand-drawn blueprint of a Gulfstream I and looking at how designers drafted that iconic aircraft more than 60 years ago.”