GE Aviation has signed a digital collaboration MoU with Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC). The agreement expands the cooperation between COMAC and GE from the level of the aircraft engines and systems to the broader use of data and analytics to bring greater operational efficiency to their operations.

The MoU was signed by Wu Guanghui, VP of COMAC, and Weiming Xiang, President of GE Aviation Greater China.

Under the agreement, the two companies say they will jointly explore and collaborate on digital solutions and applications on customer and product support monitoring and diagnostics, Intelligent Aircraft and Brilliant Manufacturing.

Experts from the two companies will jointly develop digital solutions at GE's Shanghai digital collaboration centre. Data scientists, software developers and architects from GE and COMAC plan to work together to refine some of the ten billion data points produced by the aviation sector annually into solutions that can achieve greater fleet intelligence and operational insights.

In the past year, GE has opened collaboration centres in Shanghai, Dubai, Austin and Paris, connecting data, developers and GE’s Predix cloud-based operating system.