A new agreement will bring Pelico’s manufacturing orchestration technology into C-17A heavy maintenance, connecting planning, supply and engineering data in a shared workspace.
Pelico has signed an agreement with Boeing to bring its AI-enabled Manufacturing Orchestration Platform into heavy maintenance operations for the C-17A Globemaster III. The project is intended to connect supply, engineering, planning and depot workflows in one workspace, with the broader goal of reducing maintenance cycle times and making aircraft availability and delivery schedules more predictable.
The agreement addresses a particularly difficult part of aviation operations: coordinating the many dependencies involved in keeping aircraft available over long service lives. Heavy maintenance can involve material shortages, repair requirements, engineering decisions and changing priorities, and the companies say existing processes can depend on fragmented systems and spreadsheets that make it harder for teams to maintain a common view of emerging problems.
Pelico’s platform is expected to provide a real-time picture of shortages, bottlenecks and maintenance priorities, allowing different teams to work from the same operational information. The aim is not simply to automate individual tasks, but to identify disruptions and dependencies earlier so planners can coordinate responses before an issue contributes to a delayed aircraft delivery or longer period out of service.
The C-17 project also follows an earlier use of Pelico technology within Boeing Global Services’ commercial spare-parts operations. According to the companies, that deployment demonstrated the platform’s ability to reduce backlog and improve operational efficiency, providing a foundation for applying a similar approach to the more complicated environment of military aircraft sustainment.
For Boeing, the project reflects the growing role of integrated data and AI tools in managing mature aerospace fleets, where improving readiness often depends on coordinating existing resources more effectively rather than simply increasing capacity. Boeing and Pelico also plan to assess whether similar digital tools could support sustainment work on additional platforms, making the C-17 agreement a potential test case for a broader approach to maintenance operations.
