Information Retrieval for Aviation Applications

There is a recurring need for automatic Information Retrieval (IR) from quality documents, price tags, part markings, receipts, purchase orders and technical manuals - which are otherwise non-parsable. IR coupled with search functionalities has a wide range of applications from warehouses, marketplaces to even shop floors in the aviation sector. It helps in semi-automating workflows like document reviews, quality checks, collaborative Q&As and contextual extraction of information. These workflows make laborious tasks more intuitive and easier, thereby reducing the workload of the engineers using them. The paper describes an AI based IR platform which caters to the aforesaid scenarios in a scalable manner and integrates seamlessly with similar problems across different domains. It is the core to many different workflows that are currently used to detect paperwork mismatch for aviation parts, to auto-catalogue large amounts of documents, to detect the presence of sensitive information in documents, to digitize scanned documents, detecting presence of stamps in faceplates. Its capabilities can be extended beyond documents to other non-interactive and non-parsable contents as well. The intent of this paper is to describe different AI modules and services in this AI platform towards enabling Smart Factory and Industry 4.0.