Aircraft IT MRO

V1.6 • SUMMER 2012

QANTAS SUCCESS STORY

Transforming their MRO Software for the next generation

TALKING THE SAME LANGUAGE

Common standards and uniform processes

LESS PAPER: MORE DATA

Virgin leverages the value of electronic documents

IN THE NETWORK

New players and new business models for MRO

White Paper: InfoTrust Group Case Studies: Holocentric, Airbus, Virgin Atlantic Vendor Job Card: IDMR Solutions Bangkok Conference previewed… plus ‘How I see IT’, News, Webinars, MRO Software Directory and Dictionary of Acronyms…

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Hexaware is a niche, focused IT Solutions and Business Process Outsourcing Company providing end-to-end system integration and Technology services to its Travel and Transportation customers. With annual revenues of USD 230M for FY 2010, Hexaware has a global workforce of around 8300 consultants working across disparate domain and technologies. Hexaware with its strong experience in various business functions in MRO and Technical Documentation domains along with specialize services in Portfolio Analysis, System Selection, Implementation, Custom

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04 Technology and news

Life never stands still, and the pace of change and development in Aircraft MRO and MRO IT lives up to that maxim.

Those who want to keep up with what’s happening check regularly on www.aircraftit.com/MRO and here in the AircraftIT MRO e-journal.

Editor’s comment

08 The Aircraft IT Dictionary of Acronyms (DoA)

Finding the correct aviation IT related definition for acronyms, those groups of initial letters, can take a while. So we’re building an acronym dictionary for aircraft IT; not all the definitions there are; just the definitions that you need to do your job. Try it.

Aircraft IT MRO: In the vanguard of a new order; IT and engineering are what make aircraft fly.

In recent decades, we’ve grown familiar with commercial aeroplanes but all that is suddenly changing. The new generation of aircraft aren’t just made of different stuff (Composites Rule, OK!) but they employ new systems and bring with them the opportunities of a new paradigm for the way things are done. MRO is a key player in that; in the vanguard of change and compliance.

Once an aircraft has been purchased, there is no further negotiation on the price; the only cost that can be managed is the lifetime cost of flying it – whether the owner is an airline or a leasing business. In this, the MRO engineering function is critical. And, in MRO, the ability of IT and software to drive efficiency and compliance, plus optimizing time on the ground can add up to significant cost savings for these incredibly expensive machines.

There’s a lot with which MRO IT professionals need to keep abreast these days so that a single and cumulative source of knowledge and shared experience can prove an invaluable resource for a busy person. At Aircraft IT MRO that’s what we do, deliver knowledge and shared experience to your desktop from people who understand your world, who know what you need to know and who can contribute usefully to what you do.

You’ll find in this issue, a round-up of the news that you need; and there’s material about standards and new business models as well as how OEMs might muscle in on MRO. We also look at how one airline took the opportunity of new generation aircraft to drive new MRO systems and processes and how another has tamed the paper and installed a technology based document solution. You’ll find how a revolutionary approach is seeking to introduce a common ethos and language for everybody involved in keeping a plane in the air and you’ll learn what makes a key software vendor tick. Plus, of course, How Michael Denis sees IT. And for all of those acronyms that fly around, we are proud to introduce our dictionary of acronyms to save your time and support your understanding.

As well as that, the Aircraft IT live demonstration webinars allow readers to research the software package most appropriate for their needs and access past webinars while, of course, future webinars are open for every reader who registers.

Aircraft IT MRO: knowledge to your professional intelligence.

Ed Haskey

The views and opinions expressed in this publication are the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of their companies or of the publisher. The publisher does not guarantee the source, originality, accuracy, completeness or reliability of any statement, information, data, finding, interpretation, advice, opinion, or view presented.

Michael Wm. Denis, VP, Customer Engagement, InfoTrust Group Change is underway in MRO: and it’s not just OEMs planting their flags in the sector but also new business models, such as networks, to address new generation aircraft; standards convergence and new software capabilities are changing the ground rules.

16 CASE STUDY: A new system for Qantas Engineering (QE)

Geoff Zuber, General Manager, Aerospace & Utilities, Holocentric Qantas Engineering (QE) took the opportunity of bringing new A380s into the airline to significantly upgrade and implement a new computer system and business processes fit for the airline’s long term needs.

20 EVENT PREVIEW: Airline & Aerospace MRO & Operations IT Conference – APAC, Bangkok, 17th & 18th October 2012 Find out which 30+ IT vendors are exhibiting their software solutions

22 Past webinars: knowledge transfer and access for industry experts

View Video Recordings of our Past Live MRO Software Demonstration Webinars See full information and view video recordings of past Live MRO Software Demos, including: Volartec, IDMR Solutions, InfoTrust Group and Omega Airline Software.

24 How I see IT

Standards are great for aircraft records, unless there’s more than one of them… and they’re incompatible.

Michael Wm. Denis, VP, Customer Engagement, InfoTrust Group Michael’s world view is clear and sometimes controversial: never vanilla. In this issue he tackles standards, transferability and whether anybody cares enough to save the industry the $7 billion that incompatibility has cost in the past 20 years.

26 CASE STUDY: Documentation in the 21st Century

Julie Steadman, Principal Airworthiness Records, Virgin Atlantic When Virgin Atlantic decided to go paperless, they took some time and trouble before selecting FLYdocs as the technology partner who could deliver the airline’s objectives. It all turned out very well for both parties.

30 VENDOR JOB CARD: What makes IDMR Solutions tick?

Israel Revivo tells Aircraft IT In the latest of our Q&A pieces, Israel Revivo, President and CEO at IDMR Solutions Inc., completes his paperless ‘Vendor Job Card’ for Aircraft IT.

CLICK HERE: Send your feedback and suggestions to AircraftIT MRO AircraftIT MRO is published bi-monthly and is an affiliate of Aircraft Commerce and part of the AviationNextGen Ltd group. The entire contents within this publication © Copyright 2012 AviationNextGen Ltd an independent publication and not affiliated with any of the IT vendors or suppliers. Content may not be reproduced without the strict written agreement of the publisher.

10 WHITE PAPER: MRO Networks

CLICK HERE: Subscribe for free

AircraftIT MRO

Publisher/Editor:

E-mail:

Telephone:

Website: Copy Editor/Contributor: Magazine Production:

E-mail:

Ed Haskey ed.haskey@aircraft-commerce.com +44 1403 230 700 or +44 1273 700 555 www.aircraftIT.com John Hancock Dean Cook deancook@magazineproduction.com

32 Upcoming live MRO software demonstration webinars

A preview of live MRO software demonstration webinars with Hexaware presenting an MRO Business Analytics Software Demonstration Webinar on 6th September 2012 and TRAX covering Maintenance Software on 13th September 2012

34 CASE STUDY: Getting high value by spreading IT services

Dr Franck Duluc, Engineering & Maintenance Research Manager at Airbus Many people and organizations will work on an aircraft but usually with no uniform way of working, record-keeping or communication. SIMID seeks to provide a lifetime common working ethos and language for all MRO systems that work on the aircraft.

39 MRO Software directory

A detailed look at the world’s leading MRO IT systems.

4 | NEWS | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | SUMMER 2012

Four new software solutions providers join AircraftIT vendor group AircraftIT is very pleased to announce the inclusion of four new solution providers to the publication’s growing panel of vendors.

ADSoftware has developed an integrated fleet management system and logistic package called AIRPACK. This 6 module system answers the needs of aircraft and helicopters operators, as well as MRO and CAMO centres. With more than 45 clients worldwide, the strength of ADSoftware is the simplicity of its products; they are Microsoft Windows® ready, Web-enabled, available in various languages and a complete training can be done in just five days. The company also provides a 24/7 online technical support and extremely competitive pricing.

AviIT is exclusively focused on the provision of software solutions to the aviation sector. eMan provides an efficient capability for the distribution of technical publications across the maintenance and repair estate. Used by aircraft operators and 3rd party MROs alike, eMan unlocks the benefits of smooth and efficient distribution of engineering and process documentation. eMan is available as an on-premise or hosted offering for complete deployment flexibility. Archimedes is the firm’s ACARS data management solution.

Holocentric provides software and services for airlines to build Operational Frameworks and Business Management Systems to support

the business. This includes successfully completing the Transformation Programs, including implementing the MRO software, training material and publishing of the portal for Business, including both legacy and new applications. This is achieved by creating an operational framework and portal, useable by all personnel. Holocentric customers’ MRO projects are successfully completed within budget. Importantly, compliance is increased across the organisation as a result.

PSIpenta Software Systems GmbH offers a complete solution for managing and maintaining complex technical systems. The philosophy of Perfection in Aerospace is reflected in all aspects of the firm’s software. PSIpenta suite supports the planning and control of maintenance and servicing processes. The scope covers the whole MRO process ranging from slot planning to mobile processes. PSIpenta Planning, Execution & Control refers to a solution-oriented approach based on standardized software modules. It enables the optimization of value-adding processes and increases logistic planning in existing system landscapes with commercial focus.

AircraftIT editor and publisher, Ed Haskey, welcomed the new vendors to the panel, saying that, “It is the inclusion of high caliber businesses such as these four that increasingly makes Aircraft IT the resource of choice for aviation IT professionals.”

Click here for full SOFTWARE details and for a demo

AMOS

A Story of Success “We assess AMOS as a top line product which is endeared and accepted as a fine tool by our users,” states Air Asia Read more about the world-class M&E software system at SWISS-AS.COM

Malmo Aviation selects Aviation42 for publications migration Malmo Avaition has selected Aviaition42 to provide software to migrate its technical publication data from Rusada Envision to Amos. This follows on from the successful migration of its maintenance and inventory data.

Airberlin Technik goes live with AviIT eMan

AviIT Ltd announced in late July 2012 that its library management and document distribution solution, eMan, had been successfully deployed to support the European aircraft service and repair operations of airberlin technik, a leading provider of MRO services. The eMan implementation provides airberlin technik with the ability to ensure that only the current version of aircraft servicing documentation are available to its in-house, remote, and 3rd party service operations wherever they are located. eMan is hosted at AviIT’s Edinburgh data center and provides airberlin technik librarians with a high-availability cloud-based environment for the management and distribution of technical and process documentation. The use of the eMan hosted environment greatly reduces the cost of maintaining the IT infrastructure and the support required to manage airberlin’s technical library and end-user equipment.

SUMMER 2012 | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | NEWS | 5

ADSoftware: winning customers and awards

Mauritania’s national carrier signs with ADSoftware

French aviation software company, ADSoftware, announced in late April 2012 that Mauritania Airlines International had signed to implement AIRPACK Fleet Management System and Logistics Solutions for its two Boeing 737-500 and one 737-700.

AIRPACK Suite will entirely handle line maintenance executed at the Nouakchott International Airport maintenance facility and will assist in coordinating the continued airworthiness and aircraft technical support done by British company MS4 Aircraft Management Group.

While AIRTIME (fleet management module) will make it easier for the airline management team to ensure that the maintenance is conducted following an approved maintenance program based on the Boeing type certificate holder’s recommendations, AIRSTOCK (Inventory and logistic module) will keep control of the global component service providers and of the aircraft components supply in compliance with the EASA/FAA regulations.

In the coming months ADSoftware’s specialists will work closely with Mauritania Airlines International’s technical team to implement AIRPACK Suite.

New Armenian cargo airline Veteran Avia chooses ADSoftware

It was announced in late May 2012 that Veteran Avia, the newly formed Armenian airline, has selected ADSoftware’s AIRPACK to manage its expanding cargo fleet, bases and stocks. ADSoftware has already started implementation of AIRPACK Fleet Management System and Logistics Solutions comprising AIRTIME, AIRSTOCK, AIRDOC, AIRUSER and AIRSTAT. Veteran Avia is aware that the user’s ability and willingness to adopt the new system will depend in part on the type of training they receive. This has been carefully thought about and a realistic time frame scheduled to soon start in Sharja, UAE.

ADSoftware a National Finalist in the European Business Awards 2012

In early July 2012, the European Business Awards announced that ADSoftware is to represent France as a National Finalist in the 2012/2013 Awards programme.

ADSoftware has been selected as one of 30 French National Finalists from 15,000 companies and will now compete for National Champion status in the next round of the competition. The aviation industry dedicated French software developer and publisher has been selected as a National Finalist in The RSM International Entrepreneur of the Year Award category.

Launched in 2006, the European Business Awards is an independent awards programme to recognise and promote excellence, best practice and innovation in the European business community, and judged in line with the broad aims of the European Union and business representative groups across the member states.

Alkym® develops SAP interface and expands Latin American market

Click here for full SOFTWARE details and for a demo

PSIPENTA Software for Perfection in Aerospace

Alkym® new interface with SAP®

As July 2012 opened, Volartec announced that Alkym, management and control system for aircraft maintenance had completed the new interface with SAP. Based on prompt analysis performed in conjunction with LASER Airlines and BEKESANTOS SAP Gold Partner staff, the interfaces with SAP were developed and implemented.

After 8 man/weeks of work the overall objectives of the project were completed, providing files with information coming from Alkym which are then fed to and processed by the SAP interfaces that, brought to the production environment, integrates the core company processes.

Venezuelan airlines reinforce Volartec’s Latin American market position

As July 2012 closed, Volartec added two further significant Venezuelan airlines to the numbers who have completed implementation projects for the company’s Alkym MRO software in the Latin American market for MRO software solutions.

Valencia, Venezuela based Aserca Airlines, completed an implementation project for Alkym during July. Aserca operates a fleet of 14 MD-80 Series aircraft from hubs in Valencia and Caracas to largely domestic destinations in Venezuela plus one or two regional destinations outside of the country.

Barcelona, Venezuela based SBA Airlines will commence in mid-August with the project to implement Alkym.

This will be for its fleet of 10 aircraft, including B757, B767 and MD-80 serving domestic routes as well as destinations in Panama, Spain and the United States from a main base at Caracas, and a hub at Maracaibo.

Mobile Processes

MRO

Sequencing

Order Management Warehouse Management Spare Parts Management Adaptive Planning Project Management Skill Management

Data Collection

PSIpenta suite supports the planning and control of maintenance and servicing processes. The scope of PSIpenta suite covers the whole MRO process ranging from slot and hangar planning to mobile processes.

Learn more about PSIPENTA and visit us in Bangkok on the Airline & Aerospace MRO & Flight Operations IT Conference at space E2.

PSIPENTA Software Systems GmbH Dircksenstrasse 42-44 • 10178 Berlin – Germany sales@psipenta.com • www.psipenta.com

6 | NEWS | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | SUMMER 2012

Click here for full SOFTWARE details and for a demo

WinAir AVIATION MANAGEMENT

SOFTWARE

Why WinAir? PROCESS DRIVEN MAXIMIZES EFFICIENCY EASY TO USE PROVEN IN THE REAL WORLD SEAMLESS MIGRATION

www.avbasesystems.com

Swiss-AS AMOS developments in Europe and Middle East Entire SWISS fleet now managed in AMOS

Having a complete technical overview of all SWISS data in AMOS has reduced the complexity of the fleet management while significantly increasing cost transparency.

Before the in-sourcing process was finalised, SWISS managed only the Avro and A330 fleet in-house. SWISS has now taken over the responsibility for 84 instead of 32 aircraft. This also means that SWISS relies heavily on AMOS in its full extent to cope with the significant strategic change. Managing the 84 aircraft and more to come will now be the daily business of SWISS Technical Services.

Project ‘Manumea’ was launched by SWISS to in-source its Part M and Line Maintenance activities from an external MRO provider. Now SWISS Technical Services is responsible for the entire fleet including the A320 and A340 aircraft. After months of preparation, the transfer of services from the 3rd party MRO provider to SWISS Technical Services took place successfully in April 2012. Since the SWISS MRO data for the A320 and A340 aircraft was historically kept in the maintenance provider’s system, the data was transferred into AMOS. Several working groups with assigned tasks ensured that AMOS quickly came up to speed in managing the complete SWISS fleet. The data transfer, as in most projects, was the major hurdle because the data in the legacy ERP system was structured differently to that of a typical MRO software package. However, the project team, supported by Swiss-AS experts, solved this issue successfully so that the go-live was on time.

AMOS to support extensive growth of SAEI in the near future

Saudia Aerospace Engineering Industries (SAEI), the MRO provider of Saudi Arabian Airlines, signed in midJune 2012 for AMOS of Swiss-AS to manage all its MRO services. The Saudi MRO provider has chosen AMOS as the perfect fit to support its challenging expansion plans. Although the implementation is considered complex, the project is expected not to span more than 18 months.

Swiss-AS is responsible for the proper implementation of AMOS as well as developing and delivering a training program for SAEI. Through its long-term partner CrossConsense, Swiss-AS will also engage in crucial steps of the data migration stream of the project. Furthermore this AMOS implementation will be characterised by an extended on-site presence of the Swiss-AS’ project managers and implementation specialists.

Lufthansa Flight Training to use AMOS for its entire simulator fleet

In mid-July 2012, Lufthansa Flight Training (LFT) signed with Swiss-AS agreements to maintain their 37 simulators in AMOS. Since 2008, LFT’s pilot school in Bremen has been relying on AMOS for their training aircraft. Their positive experience has convinced the management to use AMOS and the additional simulator module AMOS_SIM for LFT’s flight simulator fleet.

A productivity increase is expected through the shut-down of LFT’s 20 legacy software systems and the establishment of AMOS as leading application. By using AMOS for the maintenance of the 37 flight simulators as well as training aircraft, Lufthansa Flight Training anticipates savings over the next few years.

InfoTrust Group Joins ATA e-Business Steering Group In mid-June 2012, InfoTrust Group, provider of technical publishing solutions and services, announced that it has joined the ATA e‐Business Steering Group. Tim Larson, InfoTrust Group’s product owner for its TechSight/X® S1000D offering and a previous chairman of the ATA e‐Business Steering Group, will represent InfoTrust Group on the Steering Group and as part of the Civil Aviation Working Group (CAWG) where he will contribute to recommendations on modifying S1000D standards to be the world‐wide accepted future technical data exchange standard for the civil aviation industry.

As a technology provider with proven expertise in developing and implementing iSpec 2200, S1000D, and other standards‐based solutions, InfoTrust Group brings a practitioner’s perspective to the e‐Business Steering Group’s work and represents a voice for its customers who may not participate actively in technology‐based standards groups.

SUMMER 2012 | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | NEWS | 7

Rusada launches Envision Lite™ and Ocean Sky upgrades to the new solution while RAK goes with Envision Envision Lite™ Takes Flight

In late June 2012, Rusada launched Envision Lite™, an integrated, end-to-end aviation solution, delivering maintenance, parts and resource management and which has been designed to achieve maximum results, with minimum set up.

Building on the success of Envision Professional, Envision Lite enables MROs and fleet organisations to achieve better business decisions and to respond quickly and efficiently to change. Incorporating the following modules – configuration, resource, maintenance, fleet, materials and finance manager – Envision Lite focuses on the key aspects of maintenance, parts and resource management, offering flexibility and efficiency, process control, and visibility for decision making while supporting compliance requirements.

Ocean Sky upgrades its systems to Rusada ENVSION LITETM

Ocean Sky, as a provider of fixed base operator (FBO) and MRO activity for the private jet space, is always driving for business improvements that directly benefit their clients and recently became one of the first clients to upgrade its

systems to the Rusada Envision LITEtm MRO and CAMO applications. Ocean Sky commenced implementation in mid-June 2012 and will be fully live on this system by the end of August 2012.

RAK Airways selects Rusada (Envision)

RAK Airways, based in UAE, elected in late July 2012 to acquire and implement the full Rusada Envisiontm modular suite. RAK Airways is driving extensive growth to its business and required a full service offering to meet its objectives: Rusada afforded the opportunity to implement rapidly, supported by the local Rusada team, whilst minimising disruption in the critical area of the continuing airworthiness department.

The Rusada Envision suite will go on to be the centre piece for the integration of the entire operation and the various related departments and peripheral systems supplied by third parties.

Installation commenced in June 2012 with a multi phased approach designed around the business needs of the airline. Engineering is already live and the whole system including flight operations is on target to be fully implemented by January 2013.

Mxi acquired by MCP and wins Russian contract Moelis Capital Partners acquires Mxi Technologies

In late May 2012, Moelis Capital Partners (MCP) – a private investment firm out of New York – announced a definitive agreement to acquire Mxi Technologies. MCP is a middle market private equity firm founded in 2007 in connection with the formation of Moelis & Company, a global independent investment bank. MCP manages $700 million of committed private equity capital, specializing in traditional private equity investments in the middle market, and has targeted aerospace and defense companies as key investment areas.

MCP sees great potential for Mxi. The company and its current management team stay intact to support Mxi’s drive to expand its market footprint – a ringing endorsement for the company. Dave Seibel, President and CEO of Mxi Technologies and Chairman of the Board, now welcomes Kurt Larsen, Greg Share, and Jim Johnson of MCP to the Mxi Board replacing the existing board members.

Maintenix Software selected for MS-21 After-Sales Support Program

In early August 2012, Mxi® Technologies announced that Russian aircraft manufacturer, IRKUT, has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for the provision of Maintenix® in support of the organization’s single-aisle MS-21 aircraft after-sales support program. Beginning with the MS-21 fleet, this agreement will help define future after-market support offerings from the aerospace company.

As the selected maintenance software provider for IRKUT’s MS-21 Operator’s Fleet Total Technical Support program, Mxi Technologies has been tasked with the implementation, field training, and knowledge transfer related to the Maintenix software in support of both Russian and international operators of the MS-21.

Click here for full SOFTWARE details and for a demo

8 | NEWS | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | SUMMER 2012

Click here for full SOFTWARE details and for a demo

The only supplier of 2 MRO ‘best of breed’ plus CMS software

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Our DigiDOC CMS is agnostic of MRO with proven integration with any competitors’ system, in addition to our own. iSPEC2200, S1000D, DITA, SPEC2000, SPEC2300

Aircraft IT acronym finder Some of the acronyms used in aviation IT. Everybody knows their acronyms, don’t they?

Well, actually, not always. The reality is that, with hundreds of acronyms to describe every complex concept, focused or multiple function technology, process, piece of legislation or the resultant regulation, it’s not always easy to remember what the group of (usually) capital letters in front of you means. Sometimes it’s obvious from the context but even then, how often do you know what you think it means but still need to look up what it really means, just to check that you are correct?

You go to the Internet and trawl through dozens of websites listing, literally, hundreds of acronyms from every walk of life and often with differing meanings in different contexts. That takes time and all that you’re really interested in are the meanings that pertain to aviation IT; whether that is directly about purely aviation topics or indirectly in the many generic business activities that are also used in airlines and aircraft operators.

So, to make that task just a little more straightforward, Aircraft IT has created a live and growing directory of aviation related acronyms: growing because we’re taking it from the white

papers and case studies published in our eJournals delivering IT knowledge for Operations and MRO businesses. There are still some acronyms with more than one meaning, even within aviation IT and related areas: we identify these with a different color and suggest that you consider the context to decide which acronym meaning is the one you need.

But this will also be very much a live facility: we’ll be regularly updating it as new (to the directory as well as to the world of aviation IT) acronyms appear in the articles submitted for publication. And if you come across an acronym that we haven’t yet included or an additional meaning for an acronym we have included, do send it in to acronyms@ aircraftit.com. Please go to the Aircraft IT Dictionary of Acronyms to help you find what those (usually) capital letters mean but, if what you’re doing is safety critical, use us as a guide to where to look and then do your research properly.

PSIpenta Software Systems GmbH contracted by E.I.S. Aircraft GmbH for ERP and MES solutions PSIpenta Software Systems GmbH contracted by E.I.S. Aircraft GmbH for ERP and MES solutions.

E.I.S. Aircraft GmbH, a supplier in the fields of engineering, production of cabin components and service provider (maintenance, repair, overhaul) for the aviation industry, decided in early July 2012 on the comprehensive PSI solution. The Berlin software provider asserted itself in the final selection round against two strong competitors.

Along with the enterprise resource planning (ERP) standard PSIpenta, E.I.S. is implementing, amongst other things, the manufacturing execution system (MES) software modules production data acquisition, staff work time logging and project management.

INTERACTIVE

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE DICTIONARY OF ACRONYMS

Silver Airways Joins TRAX!

It was announced in mid-June 2012 that Silver Airways has chosen to sign with Trax for MRO Solution Software. Trax software will help Silver Airways manage their numerous locations and diverse fleet with its MRO software to ensure their maintenance and engineering work and records are in impeccable shape. This will help them to be as efficient and organized as possible.

Silver Airways will be implementing e4, the latest version of Trax Maintenance, including over 20 modules to cater to virtually every aspect of airline maintenance. TRAX Maintenance will be able to assist Silver Airways from Material Management and Finance to Technical Records and Reliability with aircraft, inventory, and maintenance activity information integrated into a single system.

SUMMER 2012 | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | NEWS | 9

Who’s in the news: Vendors ADSoftware

ADSoftware is based in France, with offices in Thailand, Brazil and South Africa. Specialising in Aviation software, the company has developed a fleet management system and logistic package called “AIRPACK”.

Aviation42

Founded in 2009, Aviation42 is a branch of the software house Output42 and specialises in software solutions for aviation.

They create bespoke systems, work on data integration and migration, build data warehouses for business intelligence, create special reports and provide consultancy.

AviIT Ltd

AviIT is a specialist software provider focused on the aviation sector and based in Scotland, UK, with offices in the US and Australia. It provides portable inflight entertainment systems and eMan document distribution system used by major airlines, MROs, Repair Centers, Charter and Med-Flight Depts.

Conduce Software

Founded in 2010 Conduce Software is based in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, UK. Customers can buy off-the-shelf software or Conduce can create bespoke solutions, focusing on using technology to solve complex problems with simple and useful software.

Mxi Technologies

Mxi Technologies provides integrated and intelligent software, support, and services for aviation maintenance to commercial airlines, MROs, OEM aftermarket service providers, and defense operators.

Customers range from emerging, small and midsized organizations, to the largest global enterprises.

InfoTrust group

InfoTrust Group delivers solutions to hundreds of companies, in the aerospace, defense, manufacturing, automotive, high-tech, publishing and health care industries for their information processing, conversion, authoring, content and change management, publishing and distribution objectives.

PSI AG

PSI AG develops and integrates complete solutions for energy management (electricity, gas, oil, heat), production management (metals, automotive, mechanical engineering, mining, logistics) and infrastructure management for transport and safety. PSI was founded in 1969 and employs 1,500 persons worldwide.

Rusada

Rusada was established in 1987 as a UK-based aviation software provider and consultancy to the aviation industry, and system integrator. Today the company is headquartered in Switzerland, with operations in the Middle East, Asia, Europe and the Americas. The flagship product is Envision.

SAP

As a supplier of enterprise application software, SAP helps companies of all sizes; from back office to boardroom, warehouse to storefront, desktop to mobile device. SAP applications and services enable more than 172,000 customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and grow sustainably.

Swiss Aviation Software and AMOS

Swiss-AS boasts more than 100 customers worldwide, including pure operators, lowcost, regional and flag carriers, large airline groups and MRO providers. AMOS is a comprehensive, fully-integrated software package that manages the maintenance, engineering and logistics requirements of modern airlines and MRO providers.

TRAX

TRAX USA Corp. is a seller of airline maintenance software globally. TRAX Maintenance solution has been developed with Airlines and for Airlines to provide a comprehensive and advanced MRO software solution.

Volartec

Volartec specializes in the development and implementation of software systems for the aviation industry. With more than 10 years experience in the aviation industry and with a team of IT and aviation experts, Volartec offers a combination of professionalism and experience.

Who’s in the news: Airlines, Operators, OEMs and MROs airberlin technik

airberlin technik GmbH (ABT) is the aviation technology division within the airberlin group and the main provider of MRO services for the group’s aircraft. The company’s customers include not only the airberlin group, but also a steadily growing number of major German and international airlines.

Air Mauritania

Mauritania Airlines International (MAI), the national carrier of Mauritania, was created in 2009. The airline operates and maintains a fleet two Boeing 737-500 and one Boeing 737-700.

Aserca Airlines

Valencia, Carabobo, Venezuela based Aserca Airlines C.A. (Aero Servicios Carabobo) operates domestic and regional scheduled services to destinations in the Caribbean, Central America and the USA. Its main base is Arturo Michelena International Airport, Valencia, with a hub at Simón Bolívar International Airport, Caracas

E.I.S. Aircraft GmbH

worldwide. The company operates two pilot schools in Germany as well as a fleet of almost 50 aircraft for training purposes and full-flight simulators.

Malmö Aviation

Malmö Aviation is a regional airline based in Malmö Airport, Sweden operating scheduled services within Sweden and scheduled international services to Belgium and France from a hub at Stockholm-Bromma Airport.

Ocean Sky

The Ocean Sky Group is made up of six companies whose services and expertise span every area of private aviation. Headquartered in London, with further offices in Russia, the UAE and Italy as well as FBOs in the UK and Europe, they provide a range of services.

RAK Airways

RAK Airways was established in January 2006 as a private joint stock company incorporated in the RAK Investment Authority Free Zone, United Arab Emirates (UAE). The current business operates A320-200 and Boeing 757-200 aircraft.

E.I.S. Aircraft GmbH employs about 200 persons at eleven sites. E.I.S. has extensive qualifications and certifications Saudia Aerospace from the aviation industry and includes companies such as Airbus and Lufthansa Engineering Industries (SAEI) Jeddah based SAEI is a subsidiary of among its customers.

Saudi Arabian Airlines and maintains IRKUT Corporation more than 130 aircraft of Saudi JSC IRKUT Corporation is a Russian Arabian Airlines as well as offering 3rd aircraft manufacture with a 15 percent party maintenance services. SAEI will share of Russian arms exports. The expand its MRO facilities at Jeddah’s Corporation employs over 14,000 King Abdul Aziz International Airport professionals, involved in design, within the next couple of years to the manufacturing, sales, and after-sales largest Middle East MRO facilities. support of aircraft and is leading the SBA Airlines project to build the MS-21 short/midSanta Bárbara Airlines C.A, doing range family of commercial airliners business as SBA Airlines and prior Lufthansa Flight to 2008 as Santa Bárbara Airlines is Training (LFT) headquartered in Caracas, Venezuela.

Frankfurt based Lufthansa Flight It operates scheduled domestic and Training (LFT) is a wholly-owned international services from its main subsidiary of the Lufthansa Group, base at Simón Bolívar International training and instructing cockpit and Airport, Caracas, with a hub at La cabin crews in more than 200 airlines Chinita International Airport, Maracaibo.

Silver Airways

Silver Airways, based in Florida, USA operates Saab 340Bplus and Beechcraft 1900D aircraft on over 100 daily flights between 29 US and overseas getaways.

At the Gainesville Regional Airport (GNV) base they have a new state-ofthe-art maintenance facility totaling 61,000 square-feet.

Swiss International Air Lines

Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) is Switzerland’s national airline, serving 70 destinations in 37 countries from Zurich, Basel and Geneva and carrying some 15 million passengers a year with its 90-aircraft fleet. SWISS is part of the Lufthansa Group, and is also a member of Star Alliance, the world’s biggest airline grouping.

The European Business Awards

Since its launch in 2006 the European Business Awards has established itself as the ultimate platform for outstanding businesses in the EU. Designed to celebrate exceptional results across a variety of categories, the European Business Awards is a global showcase for the best in the business.

Thomas Cook Airlines

Thomas Cook UK & Ireland is the second largest leisure travel group in the UK with around 19,000 employees and is part of Thomas Cook Group PLC. The Company’s airline, Thomas Cook Airlines, operates a fleet of 44 aircraft and flies from various regional airports to destinations worldwide.

Veteran Avia

Established in 2010, Veteran Avia is a cargo airline based in Yerevan, Armenia. From its primary base at Zvartnots International Airport the carrier operates charter freight services to destinations in Europe, Asia and the Middle East using three B747-200Fs and three IL76 cargo aircraft for ad-hoc charters or long term leasing.

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MRO Business Networks need MRO IT Networks Michael Wm. Denis, Vice President, Customer Engagement, InfoTrust Group explains how new technologies are transforming old business models and increasing aircraft availability at lower total lifecycle costs.

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“…what some at the time may have viewed as a disadvantage, in fact, created a skill in Europe that North American airlines and MROs didn’t develop until this decade and, even today, not to the same level of maturity… the capability to efficiently mass collaborate”

O

n March 5, 2012, Pemco World Air Services filed for bankruptcy protection.

Outside of the United States, this event probably went unnoticed but, over the past two years, several North American MROs have filed for bankruptcy. However, when, two weeks later, Aveos Fleet Performance Inc. (previously Air Canada Technical Services — ACTS) filed for bankruptcy protection under Canadian law, the aviation maintenance industry took note.

The following day Aveos filed for liquidation, having consistently been one of the top-ten airframe, engine and component MROs in the world.

Even as these and other independent third party MROs teeter on the edge of existence, original equipment manufacturer (OEM) MRO networks are chalking up multiple deals with revenues and profits from after sale services surpassing manufacturing returns. Also, while major airline affiliated MROs and their networks feel some pain from fleet reductions and airline failures, they continue to be profitable and are, in some regions, rapidly expanding.

So, what is the future of aviation MRO and is there a discernible trend away from independent MROs? What business models are accelerating within the industry; what are MRO Networks, how critical is it to be a part of one and what enabling technologies are currently required to drive growth, revenue, partnership collaboration and profits?

The first Generation MRO Networks were about airframe cost collaboration. In the late 1960s, two consortia of European airlines created maintenance and supply chain collaboration groups. KSSU (KLM, Scandinavian SAS, Swissair and UTA) and ATLAS (Air France, Alitalia, Lufthansa, Iberia and Sabena) were not explicitly formed to conduct maintenance for profit but were collaborations focused on work allocation and cost sharing for the technical and economic management of, then new, Boeing 747 and Douglas DC10 aircraft.

Unlike their large US counterparts, European carriers didn’t then have the economies of scale to unilaterally support these new wide body aircraft. These first MRO networks were born from the need to share workload and create shared services ‘centers of excellence’. But what some at the time may have viewed as a disadvantage, in fact, created a skill in Europe that North American airlines and MROs didn’t develop until this decade and, even today, not to the same level of maturity… the capability to efficiently mass collaborate.

These first generation MRO Networks continue to this day in Lufthansa Technik LHT, Air France Industries / KLM E&M, TAM and SRT. In the case of first generation airline affiliated MRO Networks, the intent remains unchanged, to share certain workload with entities within the network to reduce costs.

Figure 1

Second Generation MRO Networks — MRO Profit Centers

The LHT Joint Venture network is considered by many to be the most advanced of this style of business model. LHT cannot efficiently perform labor intensive work in-house so, by developing partnerships and joint ventures, it trades the LHT brand, outsourcing low margin, labor intensive work to less mature airlines and MROs and, in exchange, bringing in high margin engine and component work. LH Group gets reduced maintenance cost for the airline and increased high margin maintenance revenue. Over time, LHT has developed several bundled services packages branded ‘Total (name of service) Services’: ‘Total Technical… ‘Total Engine… ‘Total Component… Services’. (See figures 1 and 2 for global reach of major MRO Networks).

Figure 2

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refers to a South Korean form of business conglomerate owning numerous international enterprises. The term is often used in a context similar to that of the English word ‘conglomerate’. In Japan, a keiretsu is a set of companies with interlocking business relationships and shareholdings; a type of business group. The keiretsu maintained dominance over the Japanese economy for the latter half of the twentieth century. Member companies own small portions of shares in each other’s companies, centered on a core bank; this system helps protect company managements from stock market fluctuations and takeover attempts, thus enabling long-term planning and investments in research, development and innovation. Today it is still a key element of the automotive and aerospace industries in Japan.

Figure 3

Third Generation MRO Networks — Bundled Lifecycle Asset Management

The next generation of MRO networks was developed by engine OEMs. Identifying the trend of intermediation within the engine OEM market, Rolls-Royce developed ‘Power by the Hour’ (PBH), a bundled services market offering users a total lifecycle cost per flying hour (CPFH) business model.

By bundling financing with lifecycle sustainment of the asset, RollsRoyce developed the ability to compete more effectively for engine sales and protect after-sale repair, service and parts revenue. It addressed the intermediation the engine OEMs were seeing by airframe OEMs, PMA vendors and large airline affiliated MROs. But to make this performancebased service lifecycle business model work, Rolls Royce and, eventually, all the engine OEMs, had to develop physical MRO networks with new IT capabilities such as in-service condition monitoring, diagnostics, prognostics and reliability analysis.

With a CPFH contract, the OEM finances the engine and ongoing maintenance with all the backend engineering and technical document management. The arrangement also blocks out non-OEM parts for the engines. However, prime vendors had to consider two options to make their MRO networks successful: either set up engine MRO shops around

the world or enter into multiple OEM-MRO partnerships. In most cases, the partnership and joint venture approach won out.

So the third-generation MRO networks were started by engine OEMs changing their business model and added significant technology capabilities in the area of in-service condition monitoring, diagnostics, prognostics and asset health management; leading to increased asset reliability and availability at reduced lifecycle costs. For the engine OEMs, this part of their business now represents over fifty percent of revenues and eighty percent of profits.

The late 1990’s also saw the advent of the latest generation of networks based on airline MRO operations. For instance, the Swire group of Hong Kong which owns the majority of Cathay Pacific Airways and Hong Kong Dragon, operates Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company (HAECO), one of the largest aircraft engineering companies in Asia, and has assembled a network of MRO companies in China.

In the airframe market, this third wave of MRO networks are an airline affiliated full service evolution of the engine OEMs business model. What is new is the advent of sovereign fund backed MRO networks in the Middle East and Asia Pacific who are adding financing through sale lease-back arrangements combined with airframe total solutions.

This network model is not unfamiliar to Asia Pacific businesses. Chaebol

Evolving MRO network business models necessitated new information technologies

As large airline affiliated MRO networks and sovereign fund aviation networks have acquired airlines and MRO’s, a patchwork of dissimilar functional technologies have resulted in operational inefficiencies. OEM MRO networks are far more advanced with respect to data compliance and interoperability and may form the platform from which airlines and independent MRO networks build their intercompany solutions.

Where MRO networks that grew out of airlines are constrained by current capabilities and technology, OEMs had no such constraint and thus enjoyed the ability to start with a whiteboard when planning for the future of aviation maintenance. So, for example, Boeing’s GoldCare network has been able to perfect processes and technology in parallel to the development of new generation aircraft.

As OEMs increasingly enter the after-sale service market, it required them to develop capabilities not inherent in manufacturing. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is the manufacturer’s perspective and capability set which is considerably different from the operator and maintainer’s Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) capability set. The common thread enabling PLM and SLM is configuration management, which is also the core function of airworthiness.

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The definition of airworthiness at its most basic level is ‘conformance to type certificate’ and ‘safe to operate’.

The first is compliance to type design allowable structure and the second is compliance to type design allowable function. Sometimes we forget the basics of engineering such as what constitutes a part and part number. Again, at its most basic level a part number rolls when form, fit or function changes. Form and fit apply to structural configuration and function applies to functional specifications.

With this in mind, if you are in the product lifecycle business and, for whatever reason, decide to get into the service lifecycle business, you have no choice but to develop in-service monitoring, forecasting and maintenance capabilities.

RCM, CBM, and AHM (reliability centered maintenance, condition based maintenance, aircraft health management) are all advanced capabilities of configuration management across structural and functional dimensions.

Structural configuration management is the tracking and analysis of the structure of a component assembly and there are two dimensions to structural configuration; one being the logical, as to how the structure performs according to airworthiness; the other being the physical ‘as operated’ and ‘as maintained’ dimension of the structure.

Functional configuration management is the tracking and analysis of the functional design of the component assembly which also has both a logical ‘as designed’ and physical ‘as operated’ dimension.

What we are doing with reliability centered maintenance, condition based maintenance, diagnostics, prognostics, etc… all the advanced capabilities, is comparing and analyzing the logical to the physical — to determine how these two things are matching up. The reliability of the maintenance program and the reliability of the engineered part as operated focuses on improving the physical functional configuration to match the ‘as designed’ logical functional configuration given a certain structural configuration.

If we operated assets in a vacuum or laboratory, in the exact same place and in the exact same way on every occasion, then this is all we would have to track; but we don’t. We operate aircraft in Europe, in deserts, in the tropics and in the Arctic. Some airlines operate aircraft from short take-off and landing airports, some from long; some airlines have longer stage links, some shorter; individual pilots will operate aircraft in slightly different ways. These differences affect the utilization, reliability and maintainability of components and assemblies in the aircraft in total.

Multi-dimensional is the ability to differentiate the structural and functional, the logical and physical across multiple effectiveness derivatives.

Figure 4

So manufacturers who have started getting into the service lifecycle management business have had to develop tools that, at their core, could manage the multiple dimensions of configuration in order that they can optimize their revenue by minimizing repairs, service parts and distribution across multi-echelon supply chains and repair networks; and this is becoming the key requirement differentiator for maintenance technology and the key enabler for advanced capabilities such as diagnostics, prognostics and autonomics.

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14 | WHITE PAPER: INFOTRUST | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | SUMMER 2012

11% in 2002 from $801 million to $711 million, saving $90 million.

Delta also implemented SmartSignal condition monitoring and predictive maintenance tool to prevent costly engine failures altogether, weeks before they occur.

The problem with standards is everybody has one

Standards over the past several decades have grown up in different parts of the various aviation industries, aerospace, commercial air transport and the military. As such, the functions and processes generated different standards developed by different industry associations and governments. Given the memorandum of understanding (MOU) agreements between Airlines for America (A4A), Administrator for International Aviation (AIA) and the Aerospace & Defence Association of Europe (ASD) as well as the US DoD and NATO, the future appears to be set on select ISO 10303 and 13374 standards and the ASD SX000i family of standards.

Now, the challenge isn’t what to standardize on, it is when to incorporate those standards, the cost of conversion and senior management commitment to comply.

For new aircraft, the decision is easy. Backward compatibility for older aircraft is another story. Standards adoption is challenged by the duality of the value proposition of individual actors’ internal costs of compliance versus the ecosystem opportunity. Obviously, if any specific company didn’t have to individually bear the burden of conversion, adoption would be faster and relatively easy.

There are several industry trends that are accelerating standards adoption, namely; new generation aircraft, asset lifecycle management systems, increased regulatory oversight and the advent of new MRO network business models.

Multi-Dimensional Configuration Management (MDCM) is a maintenance engineering capability that feeds Advanced Planning & Scheduling (APS) tools with requisite data. There are, in fact, multiple types of APS tools, such as ERP-based (Enterprise Resource Planningbased) capacity resource planning tools, MRO packaging & scheduling optimization tools, theory of Constraints-based finite capacity scheduling tools as well as transportation scheduling and routing tools. For clarity this article addresses service parts planning and allocation APS tools.

Readiness Based Sparing (RBS) is the military term for Service Parts Optimization (SPO) for performance based contracting — priced by the hour (PBH), performance based logistics (PBL) and cost per flying hour (CPFH) — and a set of tools using METRIC algorithms. Again, RBS or SPO is nothing new, the US Department of Defense (DoD) has been building algorithm based forecasting tools since the 1970s and they have been proven in the laboratory as one of the most accurate service parts forecasting and allocation technique for decades. In practice, however, RBS has not delivered the same results in real world use, primarily because the algorithms are extremely data sensitive — in terms of the established IT adage: ‘Garbage In/Garbage Out’. MDCM solves this problem by managing

both functional and structural configuration of the physical asset across multiple fields of effectiveness. RBS and MDCM are not capabilities found in any ERP software and thus both capabilities require a composite best of breed (BoB) system or systems solution in order to optimally realize PBL and Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) financial and operational value improvements. Aviation SLM represents a potential stepwise function increase in productivity, maintenance, reliability, logistics effectiveness and total system cost efficiency.

Autonomic Logistics represents quantum advancement in the sustainment of aircraft. Under the PBL contract Lockheed has proposed for the multinational F35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), service lifecycle costs are forecast to be reduced by 56%. But to attain this aircraft availability and lifecycle cost reduction, Lockheed has had to build an in-service performance monitoring capability which they call the Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS).

Delta aimed to cut its maintenance cost 51% or more using predictive analytics. In 2001, looking to reduce the $1 billion in spares inventory it carries, Delta Air Lines implemented Sevigistics Xelus inventory management application. Delta cut its maintenance spares expense by

Figure 5

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“…it is lessors that are in a unique position to enforce data harmonization through their contracting mechanisms. Lessors can easily add data and content standards to aircraft and engine leases and component sell/lease-back contracts…”

Regulatory pressures and opportunities support standards if regulatory bodies would simply be decisive and clear. The majority of regulatory enforcement action in maintenance is directly related to compliance to technical content and company procedures. Airlines and MROs both benefit from improved content standardization and interoperability.

On the other hand, regulators refusal to adequately define Instructions for Continued Airworthiness (ICA) exacerbate the challenge of airlines getting standards based data from OEMs and to provide configuration specific repair procedures to third party maintenance providers.

European Aviation Safety Agency’s (EASA) Notice of Proposed Amendment (NPA) for a Part M Subpart J independent Continuing Airworthiness Management Organisation (CAMO), is another driving force for data and content standardization as the new CAMO business model is predicated on efficiently managing multiple airworthiness programs, thus using dissimilar and mostly non-compliant airline technologies will no longer be an option. What works inside the four walls of an airline may not work across the ecosystem.

OEMs are a mixed bag of both helping and hurting industry data and content interoperability

New generation aircraft are a step change improvement in engineering and maintenance program planning and scheduling due to tightly integrated on-board and near-board condition monitoring, diagnostics, prognostics and aircraft health management. The value proposition is realized through increased aircraft availability via dynamic maintenance package phasing and autonomic logistics. OEM to airline to aircraft to MRO data networks only work with standardized data and content.

What’s also new is that content isn’t just for human consumption anymore. Traditionally technical document management is focused on human consumption of data — an engineer reading and writing a service bulletin generated EO (Engineering Order) or a mechanic reading a task card. Technology consumption of content is now the driving force

for standards consolidation and modernization.

S1000D is the core standard facilitating Integrated Electronic Technical Manuals, Central Maintenance Computers and off board AHM/PHM and maintenance information systems. The cost of data conversion is more than compensated by maintenance and supply chain savings, reliability and aircraft revenue generating availability.

While OEMs ‘eEnablement’ of aircraft lifecycle management is valuable, their pursuit of capturing larger pieces of the after sale services market and profits, are leading to what many would consider monopolistic actions. With respect to data, OEMs are using control of technical intellectual property (IP) via access to technical manuals and repair procedures as well as the form of such content — pdf versus Air Transport Association (ATA) or ASD compliant XML. It behooves airlines to look outside the four walls of their company to the entire ecosystem within which they actually function.

Leasing companies may be best positioned to enforce standards.

The Aviation Working Group commissioned Seabury Aviation to conduct a study on the economic impact assessment of dissimilar technical regulatory requirements impacting cross-border transfer of aircraft.

This study estimated that the dissimilar regulatory requirements and content-data harmonization resulted in $7 billion of cost to the leasing industry over the past 20 years. Direct costs accounted for $5 billion or 68.5% and aircraft downtime losses accounted for $2.3 billion or 31.5%. The study further identified that 93% of these costs were not material safety discrepancies; rather, 58% had similar intended safety objectives, 20% were duplication and 15% were non-safety related.

At the same time the IATA maintenance cost task force is working on standardizing aircraft and engine lease contracts and maintenance reserves. Lease contracts and maintenance reserves are getting even more complex and nonstandard as new generation aircraft come with maintenance programs that can be dynamically packaged and phased. Dynamic packaging is great for aircraft operational availability but is causing

challenges for lessors in forecasting and managing maintenance reserves.

But it is lessors that are in a unique position to enforce data harmonization through their contracting mechanisms. Lessors can easily add data and content standards to aircraft and engine leases and component sell/lease-back contracts. In doing so, they can feed their own asset management and compliance tools, as well as enforce aviation industry standards.

And that brings us back to the organizations with the greatest motivation to adopt new interoperability standards; bank and sovereign funded MRO Networks who also perform asset leasing. They benefit at the front end by multiple customer integration and at the back end by improving B2B efficiency.

The promise of MRO Networks benefits everyone in the aviation ecosystem

The ability to travel from one country to another and use a credit card, ATM card, cell phone, iPad or laptop WiFi is simple and seamless.

The ability to move an aircraft from one regulatory geography to another and the ability to transfer aircraft records, tech manuals, task cards or MPD from one company to another somehow requires the use of paper or pdf and back flips by IT departments. COOs and business units should be incensed, as should CFOs. The vision of the promised land of seamless MRO B2B interoperability between OEMs’ products and airlines’ services across the various MRO Networks has been on the drawing board for well over a decade. We have made significant progress through the influence and edicts of the US DoD and NATO mandating certain ASD standards and the technological advancements of new aircraft systems.

MRO business networks need industry standard MRO IT networks. The problem isn’t that the technology and standards haven’t been developed that provide considerable operational and financial benefits to all of the participants in the ecosystem. Rather, the challenge we face today is one of execution and collaboration.

Business models and technology have evolved to the point that traditional methods simply can no longer keep up. And while the costs of not implementing new standards based technology today may pale in comparison to more pressing issues such as fuel and labour costs, the failure to act slowly and steadily erodes the infrastructure that makes the entire ecosystem and individual businesses run.

The challenge is also one of visibility for senior executives that haven’t been presented with the value potential. Why buy smart aircraft and plug them into a dumb maintenance management system? It’s just one more death by a thousand cuts.

At the end of the day, the consequences of inaction get passed along to aircraft owners and operators and ultimately to their end consumers — passengers. n

Michael Wm. Denis

Vice President, Customer Engagement, INFOTRUST

Michael leads ITG’s customer relationship development and consulting services practice.

With 24 years’ experience in the aviation, aerospace and defense industries, he has held numerous positions of responsibility across diverse functions including corporate strategy, market analysis, scenario planning, mergers and acquisitions, IT, performance metrics and process reengineering.

His technology experience includes engineering, maintenance and supply chain management, autonomics and aircraft health management, flight operations systems and enterprise resource planning. Most recently, he has focused on software-as-a-service (SaaS) and business process outsourcing (BPO) models that optimize the profitability of capital intensive, cash flow sensitive services.

Michael Denis is an established global thought leader in the area of aircraft lifecycle sustainment.

He has published multiple articles on aligning business strategy to operations execution through enabling information technologies and is frequently called upon to present at aviation industry conferences.

Prior to joining InfoTrust Group, he was a principal at several aviation consultancies, a Fortune 100 consultancy and a veteran of the U.S. Navy, where he served as a gas turbines engineer.

He holds a bachelor’s Nuclear Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a master’s Decision Science from the J. Mack Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University.

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16 | CASE STUDY: QANTAS | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | SUMMER 2012

Qantas Engineering (QE) steps up to a new MRO system Geoff Zuber, General Manager, Aerospace & Utilities at Holocentric, tells how QE upgraded MRO IT with Project Marlin and Holocentric

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“This approach is providing QE with an over-arching framework from which to manage its MRO business, from corporate governance, business process improvement and value chain management, to system requirements…”

T

he Marlin Program is a Business Project to implement a new computer system and business processes to manage the end-to-end process of aircraft maintenance within Qantas. It will allow the company to increase efficiency in maintenance operations, and provide a platform for future business improvement. Marlin will replace current legacy systems with the latest technology and will enable the business to enhance the configuration and maintenance management of the Qantas mainline fleet as it continues to grow in size and complexity.

In Project Marlin, the team is working towards implementing one of the most significant business transformation projects in Qantas Engineering’s (QE) history by redesigning and standardising 512 business processes, reducing over 300 computer applications to around 30 and implementing new Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) processes.

A key driver for the establishment of the Project Marlin program was the introduction of the Airbus A380 to the Qantas fleet.

The legacy systems had limitations in supporting the A380’s complex configuration management requirements, so eight months prior to the delivery of the first A380, Qantas decided to consolidate its MRO platform to one software system (Maintenix) and model the end-to-end MRO process, using Holocentric. This enabled them to capture the real business improvements that could be realised from modelling the current and future state for A380 MRO. Adopting this approach meant that QE was able to avoid the costs and inefficiencies that would result from having to migrate the A380 maintenance from the two legacy systems to a new platform at later date.

Because the A380 is a small and defined fleet, it provided an ideal test-bed for the Maintenix product and for using Holocentric in the process of mapping the interdependencies between MRO processes, systems and job roles.

Modelling the business to simplify change

As part of the introduction of the Marlin Solution, QE is using the opportunity to align its business processes with the new technology and has chosen Holocentric as the tool for doing this because of its flexibility and dynamic nature.

QE chose to enter into a strategic partnership with Holocentric to create an operational process and knowledge framework, from which future business performance improvements could be obtained. One advantage of using Holocentric for this process is the ability to benchmark current processes (or the ‘as is’ model) against future performance improvements and job roles (the ‘to be’ model). This ability to benchmark reduces the risk and costs normally associated with a large-scale transformational project such as Project Marlin.

Holocentric is enabling QE to utilise one modelling platform to map business processes and develop training material, as well as document policies, procedures and work instructions. It has also assisted in streamlining and simplifying the key phases of this large-scale project (strategy mapping, program planning and implementation).

This approach is providing QE with an over-arching framework from which to manage its MRO business, from corporate governance, business process improvement and value chain management, to system requirements and fulfilment, and the technical architecture that underpins this business.

QE is managing the different layers of MRO and the different aspects of its business (e.g. occupational health and safety, engineering, technical systems, compliance reporting etc.) through the Business Management Framework (BMF), which was developed in early 2011 to capitalise on the modelling of processes conducted in Project Marlin that define how the QE business operates. The BMF overarches all other frameworks, and provides a single portal that meets the requirements of all QE standards and regulations. The Project Marlin team ensured that the BMF was closely aligned to the regulatory framework, and so when individual processes were built into the model the new processes were already aligned with the regulations and QE’s own quality assurance processes.

The transparency and real-time view of the various layers and sections of the QE operation responsible for safety compliance, and contained in the Qantas Business Management System, enhances its governance. The project developed a business framework that was closely tied to the regulatory framework. This was then implemented in the models so that QE’s new processes are aligned with the regulations.

This ability to delve into the different layers and sections of the MRO business meets QE’s change objectives of being able to: • Achieve real-time compliance reporting; • Improve defect and maintenance requirement management; • Provide point of maintenance acquittal, electronic certification and records entry at point of execution; • Optimise and standardise key business processes across all locations; • Automate the traceability of processes for audit or investigation purposes.

Holocentric Modeler – Relationships

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Modelling the human element of change

By using one platform to build a comprehensive picture of the MRO operations, QE is able to use its own employees to capture the relationships between people and the work they do, the dependencies between processes and the change impacts to roles and people.

Applying a model-based collaborative approach to streamlining QE’s MRO has helped coordinate and capture the input from multiple stakeholders and project members.

The process of building a complete picture of QE’s MRO operations and implementing the solution involved over 170 project employees, 4,000 business requirements to be incorporated into the model, 600 critical business processes to be reviewed for improvement opportunities, and over 5,000 users to be trained in the new streamlined MRO operation.

QE has been able to use many of its own employees for Project Marlin by selecting people from various business areas who have a good knowledge of the current business processes and systems. These people have been provided with training in the new computer system and other tools, such as Holocentric.

In order to address specific elements of the MRO process and specific stages of the change program QE divided the Project Marlin solution into 27 solution areas (or teams) which basically had responsibility for designing a homogenous component of the end-to-end MRO process. During solution design, these teams have come together to workshop and develop the new design for their particular solution area.

The Project Marlin team incorporates business skills from all areas of QE, including Line Maintenance, Heavy Maintenance, Maintenance Planning, Aircraft Airworthiness, Supply Chain, Finance, and Business Reporting. In addition, the project has project managers, change, communications and training specialists, reporting and analytics specialists, and all aspects of IT including infrastructure, architecture, testing, release and implementation management, data and systems development skills. The Subject Matter Experts on the Project Marlin team have been used in all aspects of the project from solution design, system testing and troubleshooting, user support, policy and procedure development and training.

This approach has not only made it easier to coordinate the multitude of stakeholders and project members involved in Project Marlin but it has also helped gain the support of employees early in the life of Project as they are able to see the relationship between their job role and the overall enhancements to the MRO process. Being able to publish the model and have employees share information about MRO processes electronically means that they are more likely and able to provide feedback on ways to further improve the overall business processes for MRO.

“Having such a comprehensive knowledge base, which presents information about MRO processes in a visual, user friendly way provides QE with a robust process to quickly build the skills of new employees…”

Benefits of using Holocentric

There are many benefits associated with using Holocentric, including the ability to ensure the business processes delivered through Marlin meet QE business requirements and regulatory obligations. It also provides a means to automatically publish the process and training information in an electronic and user-oriented format.

Prior to implementing Project Marlin, a comprehensive business requirements analysis was conducted, which showed that all QE MRO 6 processes have been impacted by Marlin, which comprise about 75% of all QE business processes.

As a result, QE is creating a knowledge base of information that is easy to update, which will be available to users via a web interface. This will then be updated as the business model is updated and will also be the source for creating new training materials automatically.

All of this information comes from one source of data within Holocentric, from which QE can also create detailed Work Instructions, based on Use Cases that hyperlink to graphical representations of the process models.

This makes it easier for employees to understand the tasks they need to complete.

Using a visual model to represent key business processes and the interaction between people and process will help improve communication with business users, as information is presented in a way that they understand, and that is clear and meaningful to their job role.

Organic to organizational knowledge

Holocentric Views

Building a platform in Holocentric that links all of QE’s documentation and provides users with the latest information online via the Holocentric Modelpedia portal means that the company is able to maintain a comprehensive integrated knowledge base within the business. It also means business users across all hierarchical and functional roles are now empowered to contribute and collaborate in such a way that continuous improvement can inherently become the way QE does business.

This aspect of the project addresses the issue of retaining the Intellectual

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Property (IP) of QE. Having such a comprehensive knowledge base, which presents information about MRO processes in a visual, user friendly way provides QE with a robust process to quickly build the skills of new employees, while maintaining the fidelity of the compliance and MRO process.

Having a visual view of each person’s job role and business process also makes it easier for employees to quickly reference the steps and decision points required to meet QE’s MRO, airworthiness, quality assurance checks, business requirements checks and regulatory requirements from the one model.

Using the visual model to identify and provide access to all the various checks and regulatory requirements takes away the complexity of each process, and makes it easier for employees to conduct real-time compliance reporting and maintenance checks. Employees are able to do this because the model enables them to view a personalised representation of their role, which presents only the steps and systems that are relevant to their job.

This negates the need to go hunting for the required information in a series of manuals to check that they have followed all the necessary processes to acquit a particular MRO process.

Converting corporate knowledge to a corporate asset

The QE business recognises that it is undertaking a large and very complex project, but they also have an understanding of what is required to successfully complete the Marlin journey.

By utilising Holocentric, QE is now well on the way to having a fully integrated corporate repository of knowledge which is a single source for business processes and procedures, training and change management material and policies. This repository essentially provides an integrated Business Management System for QE. n

ABOUT HOLOCENTRIC Holocentric products and services enable high performance organisations to achieve continual improvement using tools that are easy to use, quick to deploy, and save time and costs in delivering major change programs. The company provides business management systems for large and complex organisations that operate in capital intensive, highly regulated environments, such as airline maintenance and overhaul.

The HOLOCENTRIC AVIATION ENGINEERING BUSINESS MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (HAEBMS) consists of an operational framework, knowledge base and continuous improvement platform that together provide a complete, but personalised view of an organisation’s business.

Geoff Zuber

General Manager, Aerospace & Utilities, Holocentric

Geoff Zuber is one of the owners and founding members of Holocentric and heads the Aerospace and Utilities practices.

He has held senior roles in Honeywell, Microsoft and Cisco Systems, before joining one of the two companies that were merged to form Holocentric.

Over more than 30 years Geoff has lead teams engaged in large government, defence and commercial implementations and has also independently advised government and industry on similar programs.

The Aerospace and Utilities practice at Holocentric is engaged in large scale change programs and the associated IT implementations including at Qantas and Cathay Pacific.

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The Qantas Business Management System

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w: www.holocentric.com t: +61 2 9957 3169 Holocentric 0812 HP.indd 1

THE DNA OF YOU BUSINE THE DNA OF YOUR BUSINESS® 01/08/2012 11:48

20 | EVENT PREVIEW | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | SUMMER 2012

Airline & Aerospace MRO & Operations IT Conference – APAC

Bangkok, 17th & 18th October 2012

The world’s leading aircraft IT conference for MRO & Flight Operations solutions returns to the APAC zone for 2012

Special Offers

To attend this Conference are available for Aircraft IT Members.

Airlines & Aircraft Operators AND INDEPENDENT MROS: Free Delegate place and two night’s Free accommodation at the conference hotel.

All Other Delegates: Half Price Delegate Fees These special offers are limited in number so contact us as soon as possible to book.

Contact Stephen Keeble at Stephen@aircraft-commerce.com or +44 1403 230 888, quoting ‘Aircraft IT Members’ special offer.

If you are not already a member of Aircraft IT you can sign up for free: CLICK HERE.

CLICK ON THE FOLLOWING LINK FOR Full Conference Information:

> Conference Website

CLICK ON THE FOLLOwing FOR CONFERENCE BROCHURES:

> Airlines/Aircraft Operators Brochure > Independent MROs Brochure > All other delegates Brochure

Delegate Registration AND TO BOOK YOUR PLACE(S) See special offers above or click on the following: > Airline/Aircraft Operators > Independent MRO Providers > All other delegates Alternatively contact Stephen Keeble on +44 1403 230 888 or email: stephen@aircraft-commerce.com

A

ircraft Commerce and Aircraft IT are delighted to be returning to Bangkok this October for the APAC event in the hugely successful MRO & Flight Operation IT Conference series. The conference has been running with great success in the EMEA, Asia/Pacific and Americas zones for the past seven years; bringing together IT Vendors with the airlines, MROs and aircraft operators in those regions.

The October 2012 event promises to be bigger and better than ever before with more IT vendors exhibiting their software solutions, IT case study presentations and interactive workshops addressing key issues and Jazz Air challenges.

The MRO & Flight Operations IT Conference in Bangkok offer airlines, MROs and aircraft operators a one-stop opportunity to review their entire IT platform, over just two days, for both aircraft maintenance and flight operations through: • Demonstrations of the latest software solutions from over 30 major MRO and Flight Operations IT vendors, all under the same roof; • Cutting edge knowledge gained from attending keynote presentations and case studies plus interactive workshops; • The chance to network and exchange ideas with their peers in hundreds of other airlines, MROs and aircraft operators throughout the APAC region.

This information and shared experience driven program has made the MRO & Operation IT Conference a must attend event for airlines, MROs and aircraft operators looking to select and install new MRO or Operations IT Systems; learn about the latest system upgrades and addon solutions with how to incorporate them into their current IT System; or simply on a fact finding mission to learn about the whole process.

“A great way to meet other operators as well as vendors and to hear about the latest technology.”

Demonstrations of the latest Software from over 30 major IT Vendors

A who’s who of IT vendors will be exhibiting their latest solutions in the large exhibition area making it possible for airlines, MROs and aircraft operators (under the same roof and in just two days) to try out and see demonstrations of all the major software solutions on the market. The software on display includes the following.

MRO IT Solutions

• Best of Breed MRO IT Solutions; • Tablet/iPad solutions for the Hangar; • Fully Integrated MRO Systems linked to Enterprise Wide Solutions; • Supply Chain Solutions; • Digital Documentation Management; • Content Management Systems; • Documentation Scanning Solutions.

SUMMER 2012 | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | EVENT PREVIEW | 21

“Very good – a nice balance between workshops, case studies and vendor sales activities. Also a very useful networking opportunity. I feel I learned about the vendors’ current software solutions and common issues problems in the MRO world.”

Virgin Atlantic Airways Flight Operations IT Solutions

• • • • • • • •

iPad solutions for the Flight Deck; Paperless Cockpit Solutions; Electronic Flight Bags (EFBs); Electronic Technical Logs (ETLs); Flight Planning Solutions; Operations Cost Management; Fuel Saving Software; Emissions Trading Solutions.

IT Vendors exhibiting their solutions at Bangkok this year include: ADB Tech, AeroSoft Systems, Airbus, Arconics, Boeing, BYTRON, Closed Loop, Commsoft, EmpowerMX, Enigma, Flygprestanda AB, FLYHT, Hexaware, Holocentric, IFR France, InfoTrust Group, Mxi Technologies, navAero, Omega Systems, OSyS, Aviation42, PSIpenta, Ramco Systems, Rusada, SDS, Smart4Aviation, Swiss-AS, TRAX, Ultramain, Volartec… click here for full details on each exhibitor.

Agenda of Keynote Presentations, Case Studies & Workshops

There will be a two day agenda of presentations by industry experts plus case studies from airlines and MROs where the latest key issues and trends in this rapidly developing sector of the industry will be discussed. Separate one hour ‘interactive workshop’ sessions are included in the agenda to ensure delegates receive key, varied and fresh information.

Keynote Presentations & Case Studies

• Keynote case study presentation: Structuring and implementing a system to get electronic data from Flight Operations, EFB, ETL, AHM and EHM into the M&E System.

• Airline Case Study: Preparing for the A380: How to make the most of the A380’s technology from a maintenance point-of-view.

• A successful RFID project: The challenges of implementation, the immediate benefits of tracking parts, using mobile solutions and achieving swift ROI following go-live.

• The problems of achieving 2-way data exchange between airline and 3rd Party MRO M&E Systems.

• Airline Round Table Discussion — iPad on the Flightdeck.

• A Class 2 EFB Success Story. The blueprint for a successful EFB program including an in-depth look at the software solution and the operational benefits.

• Aborted to take off! Lessons in EFB project management — best practice to avoid EFB failure.

• Fuel Efficiency: How to discover Fuel Savings and how to monitor the Progress of your Fuel Savings program.

Interactive Workshop / Master class Sessions

There are a number of specialist workshops / masterclasses running concurrently with the main agenda of presentations and case studies.

Delegates are invited to sign into their preferred sessions prior to the conference.

The workshops offer an interactive forum covering key topics and are each limited to 40 attendees. They are one hour in length and include: • An EFB masterclass; • An iPad / Tablet Strategy Masterclass; • A Fuel-Saving Programme Masterclass; • The need for independent Auditing of MRO Implementations; • A Business Analytics for the Airline MRO Industry Masterclass.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

For full conference information and to register your delegate place(s) click here Or call our hotlines on: +44 1403 230 888 / 307 Click here for full SOFTWARE details and for a demo

EVOLVE

The world of aviation maintenance is evolving. Maintenance organizations looking to maintain their competitive edge and safeguard their future need adaptable maintenance software. With its unparalleled commitment to quality and innovation, Mxi Technologies delivers industry-leading software that lets you keep pace.

Don’t just react to changes in the aviation industry.

Evolve with them.

Join the Evolution. mxi.com

22 | WEBINARS | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | SUMMER 2012

Past Webinars: View Video Recordings of our Live Software Demonstration Webinars at Aircraft IT Build your own MRO Software Demo Webinar Library. Search through and sign up to view the convenient video recordings of all previous Live MRO Software Demonstration & Masterclass Webinars at the following link: http://www.aircraftit.com/MRO/Webinars/Past.aspx.

This exceptional video library contains recordings of Live Software Demonstrations and Masterclasses from the following major IT Vendors: TRAX, Swiss-AS (AMOS), Enigma, Rusada, Mxi Technologies, Gen2Systems, Ramco Systems, Aerosoft Systems, 2MoRO Solutions, Lufthansa Technik (manage-m), AV-BASE Systems, plus more. An outline of four of the recent Webinar Recordings can be seen below:

A Software Demonstration: Volartec’s Alkym Management & Control System For Aircraft Maintenance.

A Software Demonstration: IDMR Solutions’ InForm Documentation Management Solution

8th March 2012

10th May 2012

n Session OVERVIEW

n Session OVERVIEW

Sign up to view this Webinar recording for a live software demonstration of their hugely popular and successful Alkym Management & Control System for Aircraft Maintenance.

This Webinar provides you with the perfect, unique, vehicle to quickly learn about one of the industry’s fastest growing MRO software systems - Alkym by Volartec. You will see a tour of the Alkym functionality, compare it to your current software or aircraft maintenance management system and see how a modern, sophisticated MRO software system looks and operates. All from the comfort of your own home or office, without any cost or sales pressure.

Sign up to view this Webinar recording for this Technical Publications & Documentation Management Software Demo Webinar. Using a live demonstration of their cutting edge, modular InForm Technical Documentation Management Software, IDMR Solutions will show you how to author and maintain virtually any document in a paperless format.

You will then be taken on a tour of their new Distribution Module which is designed to assist Technical Publications department execute distributions, quickly, efficiently and reliably.

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SUMMER 2012 | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | WEBINARS | 23

About the Live Software Demonstration Webinar Recordings

How it works:

Whether you missed them the first time around, need to refresh your understanding of available systems before making a key decision or if you are building a reference portfolio of relevant knowledge, these past webinar recordings will add vital market intelligence to your established professional skills. They’ll improve and sharpen your awareness of available solutions and add to your knowledge store. You’ll gain an overview of the major MRO software systems on the market today, from the world’s leading IT Vendors, and all at a time and a place compatible with your busy schedule. Each demonstration lasts 1 hour, providing airlines, aircraft operators and MROs with the perfect introduction to each MRO software solution demonstrated.

• Visit: http://www.aircraftit.com/MRO/Webinars/Past.aspx • Use the scroll option or view the details of the latest recorded sessions on the right and select a Webinar recording you would like to view.

• Next click ‘Register for Recording’ and enter your details.

• Once approved the video file will appear in your Member’s Area at the Aircraft IT website.

• You can then view the Webinar recording as many times as you wish, share it with your colleagues and retain it as part of your own market intelligence reference library.

Technical Publications Management Masterclass & Software Demonstration Webinar

Aircraft Maintenance Planning Software Demonstration Webinar 24th May 2012

17th May 2012

n Session OVERVIEW

n Session OVERVIEW

Sign up to view this Webinar recording for the Technical Publications Management Masterclass Webinar and Software Demo. During this complimentary Webinar, Patrick Dawson, Director of Products and Solutions at InfoTrust Group, and Tim Gesell, Sales Engineer for InfoTrust Group, will discuss why it is crucial for aerospace and airline companies to manage their maintenance and technical documentation efficiency using advanced standards like S1000D, XML & SGML and why failure to follow best practices can result in increased publication costs, longer content revision and approval cycles, and ultimately lower equipment utilization.

OVERMATTER

Join Omega Airline Software for this Aircraft Maintenance Planning Software Demonstration Webinar Recording. You will be taken on a live tour of the extremely popular AMES advanced Maintenance planning and Scheduling software system, where you will see how a powerful, modular software tool can help aircraft maintainers to create optimized, complete maintenance plans and schedules to fit any business model and easily distribute this vital information leading to increased efficiency and therefore lower costs.

You will see how this unique software solution can easily integrate with other key maintenance and operations IT solutions to provide an efficient flow of information.

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SIGN UP to VIEW THE WEBINAR RECORDING

24 | VENDOR JOB CARD | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | SUMMER 2012

How I see IT Standards are great for aircraft records, unless there’s more than one of them… and they’re incompatible. Michael Denis

r end of the (o ay d e th of d en e th "At ssengers or the value chain) either pa ors (airlines / shareholders of operat bill" cargo) are footing this INTERACTIVE: Get Involved!

Why not get involved with the debate? Send your comments or questions to Michael by clicking here.

On 26 July, GECAS and Aer Data announced their intent to establish an industry standard maintenance reserves proces sing, which includes maintena aircraft records platform. htt nce and p:// www.aerdata.com/downloads/ regulatory documentation sta Press%20Release%20AerData%2 ndardization.

0 GECAS.pdf So, what is this all Jon Andresen, President, Avi about? And is it good or bad ation Technology Solutions, for the aviation and aerospace has been a driving force within the A4 industries?

A (ATA) SPEC2000 and iSPEC 2200 Last year, Seabury conducted programs and is a staunch advocate of "not reinventing a study for the Aviation the Working Group (AWG) which wheel". identified the causes and quantified the "Economic Im Most OEMs and larger more pact of Dissimilar Technical advanced airlines know the [Regulatory] Requirements on future of standardization resides in the Transferability of the ASD family of standards Aircraft and Engines". http:/ called SX000i, which for data stand /www.awg.aero/projects/ ards includes the S1000D sch aircrafttechnicalrequirements ema.

The problem isn't that we do impactingtransferability/ Bo ttom line n't have standards; the proble = $7 Billion USD over the pas m is that we don't execute what t twenty years and growing. we promise. The Boeing 787 The question is; who's paying was supposed to be the first all this bill? At the end of the up S1000D aircraft - but mu day (or end of the value chain) either ch of the content is only available in passengers or the sharehold SGML and pdf. Rolls-Royce ers of operators (airlines / cargo) and Airbus have adopted S10 are footing this bill. Lessors 00D v4.x for the A350 while see the problem first hand, as do ope some oth er major aircraft OEMs conti rators when they move aircra nue to develop proprietary ft on/ custom off lease. And lessors do abs izations of v3. While this ma orb some of the cost, but in y enhance their total care the end, lessors and financiers sui te of products and services embed this cost of doing ine it's the rest of the industry that fficient business into their lease rat will pay the price for non-s es whenever possible. tandardization.

Richard Poutier, SVP Technical GECAS leading the way where , ILFC brought this issue to no one else was addressing the forefront in the airline, OEM the problem is better than no act and MRO community during ion s. By collaborating with Aer the Executive Council session Avi Cap, DVB and ILFC, the GECAS / ation Week before the MRO AerData team have a significa IT event ma last October. nt rket share of leased aircraft to make an 'industry standard ' Anton Tams, SVP Technical sol uti on stick. at GECAS, presented his vis ion of the future at the Aviation Week The solution AerData is bring MRO Americas conference in ing, STREAM, is a simplistic April where he described the "CarFa electronic records capture x" of aircraft assets. and archiving solution that probably ILFC and GECAS, together does address the regulatory with AerCap and DVB (joint transferability problem and ow ner probably s of AerData) definitely have does not address the larger the industry gravitas to signif pro ble m set of the avi ation service icantly move (if not force) the leasin lifecycle ecosystem. g / financing industry toward standardization (technologic But, if the solution is not ope al and data) for aircraft an n, extensible, does not use d rotables records management a sta ndard n-tiered / SOA techni . But will this address the tot cal architecture or introduce al industry problem? s proprietary data standards outside of ATA SPEC2000 or ASD Chris Markou, Director Econ SX000i, then the fear of OEMs omics, IATA, and Tiymor Kal and lessors bullying the ind imat, ustry Manager Technical Procurem and competitors will turn tru ent at Royal Jordanian Airlin e.

In this case, the hundreds of es, and millions per year tha Chairman IATA maintenance t the industry wastes will no cost Task Force are leading t be addressed. the airline initiative around sta At lea st that's the way I see it. ndardization of lease contr acts and

Aircraft IT MRO eJournal: Subscribe for FREE Two simple ways to guarantee you receive all future editions of Aircraft IT MRO 1. Fill in our online subscription form – it only takes a few moments. By filling in the subscription form you will also receive alerts regarding the latest live MRO Software Demonstration Webinars and you can also take part in all the interactive features at the Aircraft IT website.

2. Download the free Aircraft IT App – Search ‘Aircraft IT’ in the App store or click here for full information.

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26 | CASE STUDY: VIRGIN ATLANTIC | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | SUMMER 2012

Documentation in the 21st Century

Virgin Atlantic, as Julie Steadman, Principal Airworthiness Records explains, migrated documentation to FLYdocs, here’s how it went Photo: © John M Dibb

SUMMER 2012 | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | CASE STUDY: VIRGIN ATLANTIC | 27

M

any companies are looking to achieve the goal of a full online paperless office, including all of the natural savings and efficiencies that such a move can generate. The reality can often be failed, flawed processes or include expensive mistakes that do not deliver as expected. However, at Virgin Atlantic we set out to avoid these problems by moving straight to the cutting edge of Aviation Records Management with the implementation of FLYdocs.

In this case study, we’ll discuss the migration process as well as the functionality gains, productivity gains and financial gains experienced since the deployment.

Choosing the right system

There will not be many more important decisions for any Airline, MRO or Lessor than that of purchasing the right software to service their business. It’s often difficult before they deploy it for them to see all available options, understand all possibilities or predict with total accuracy the long term success of the system within their organisation. Even with exhaustive tendering processes, the success of any system deployment can only really be measured some time later when the dust has settled and the expected gains start to materialise (or not, in many cases). In simple terms, the system has to properly ‘fit’ your business to deliver real change.

When we first started talking with FLYdocs in 2009,

they had spent an exhaustive period developing the system. They hadn’t rushed the product to market and hadn’t pushed out a system that did not meet their own internal high standards, because, as Adrian Ryan, Managing Director of FLYdocs, explains, “Even though we could see a clear opportunity for a highly advanced Document Intelligence System to deliver real change, functionality and benefit to the marketplace, we knew it was better to take the time to make sure FLYdocs was going to really deliver significant business transformation immediately — unlike many other products available today.�

Implementing the system

After an intensive year long trial during which Virgin Atlantic collaborated with FLYdocs to make aviation history by delivering the world’s first fully electronic Aircraft Records Returns in a cutting edge and environmentally friendly paperless returns strategy, FLYdocs went live with Virgin Atlantic for the entire fleet in June 2011. The switch over involved scanning, processing, indexing and cleansing of all documentation in a structured and strategic way over a 12 month period. Whilst this wasn’t a pre-requisite for moving the records into FLYdocs, at Virgin Atlantic we felt a clean approach would bring benefits later down the line.

For Rick Daniels, Steve Sayers and myself — the key drivers at Virgin Atlantic in the decision to

“There will not be many more important decisions for any Airline, MRO or Lessor than that of purchasing the right software to service their business. It’s often difficult before they deploy it for them to see all available options�

Click here for full SOFTWARE details and for a demo

Looking to make your Aircra Returns really smooth and hassle free? Looking to manage your documents properly?

Looking to enjoy incredibly advanced so ware to manage it all?

You need FLYdocs. The most advanced aviation document intelligence system in the world. Accept no other.

e adrian.ryan@flydocs.aero t +44 (0)121 351 6563 www.flydocs.aero

28 | CASE STUDY: VIRGIN ATLANTIC | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | SUMMER 2012

The future for Virgin Atlantic is already here; we are already beginning to bring our documentation fully to life and make it work for the business instead of just being stored in a system. The productivity gains are already filtering through

implement FLYdocs — the process had to be smooth and well managed. “With very close collaboration and an extremely friendly, flexible and professional approach by both parties, we’ve managed to make this a really easy move.” comments Steve Sayers, Principal Information Services Engineer at Virgin Atlantic.

“We’ve built up an excellent working relationship [with FLYdocs] very quickly, which has led to being able to openly discuss issues in full confidence, safe in the

knowledge that the relationship isn’t just about money.

We know that FLYdocs will be flexible, which gives us great confidence as a business that we can implement the best solution for us as an operator, not a limited solution based on financial constraint or restrictions because we’re getting hit with loads of hidden extra fees wherever we need to add something into the scope of the project. For us at Virgin, it’s a hugely refreshing approach.”

Delivering real gains

Fast forward less than a year and the entire fleet has been transferred into FLYdocs with multiple aircraft returns in harmonious concurrent process, all being managed without a single Lease Consultant on-site, other than for regular project meetings.

The future for Virgin Atlantic is already here; we are already beginning to bring our documentation fully to life and make it work for the business instead of

just being stored in a system. The productivity gains are already filtering through. For example, during the pressurised on-going Lease Return activities faced by many airlines, because the Lease Consultants work remotely instead of at Virgin Atlantic’s offices, the daily ‘business as usual’ duties that staff across the business have to deliver are not impacted; consequently, the Lease Returns do not run late and normal business isn’t affected.

SUMMER 2012 | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | CASE STUDY: VIRGIN ATLANTIC | 29

Interfacing with Ultramain

The benefits for the Lessor team are also substantial; they get full access to all documentation and online statuses covering the entire return process without having to pay for daily expenses, hotels, flights and associated costs for every consultant, whilst at the same time being able to track everything done by each team member on a daily basis from live interactive reports built into the system.

With Virgin Atlantic’s foresight in using FLYdocs, and a fully engaged Lessor, the process of returning an aircraft becomes structured, smooth, financially beneficial for both parties and affords instant visibility for everyone. In short, with a proper approach and FLYdocs, it should be possible to deliver the records for every aircraft return on time and for it to have very little impact on the ‘day job’.

“We’re now firmly entering the next phase, which is very exciting for us;” confirms Steve Sayers, “Virgin Atlantic have now commenced roll out of a plan to manage almost all internal facing documentation within FLYdocs. Instead of storing documentation on multiple network hard drives, we’re now going to store all data within FLYdocs [which gives instant visibility worldwide], but more importantly, it will also be generated and managed there, which is a major step forward. We’re looking to roll out full authoring of documentation and digital signatures within FLYdocs, which dramatically reduces ancillary time required for managing these documents physically as they go through approval processes. The additional long term benefit is that these documents can then be plugged into the End of Lease modules within FLYdocs to start to build ‘lease return ready’ statuses and approved documentation in real time.

The medium and long term benefit to Virgin Atlantic will be massive, because once everything is working in tandem our lease return documentation will basically build itself.

“We’re already seeing this happening. FLYdocs rolled out their interactive Engine Centre recently, which means we can now build and manage lease-ready back-to-birth documentation for our Engine fleet in real time. This process will shortly be replicated for our Gears, APUs, Repairs and much more.

“From Summer 2012 Virgin Atlantic will be able to interactively repair, map and inspect the fleet online with FLYdocs’ Repair Centre, which is used not only for our day-to-day business as usual repair management; it also interfaces with our internal design documentation and our End of Lease repair statuses so, here also, the data literally starts to build itself. By the end of the year, we expect our line engineers to be able to use Tablet devices to inspect the repairs on any aircraft in the fleet in real time. This is what we call real business gains.”

Now that the fleet is in FLYdocs, the extensive deployment of highly advanced functionality that Virgin Atlantic will come to enjoy as standard in all departments, across the entire business, on a worldwide basis can really begin.

The people at FLYdocs have successfully created a live link to Ultramain [Virgin Atlantic’s M&E system] which allows FLYdocs to cross populate data for engineers to access anywhere in the world. Now that we have piloted this process with a great deal of success, it will be further expanded to other areas of the business, such as building truly live statuses in the new system where audit documentation builds itself; managing live hours and cycles and forecast reporting for Lease Returns in harmony with Ultramain. The possibilities are almost endless.

It’s important for us that FLYdocs is able to deliver this type of change to Virgin Atlantic, because, so often, a software provider will promise the moon and deliver the earth. In two years’ time we expect Virgin Atlantic to be enjoying huge gains across almost every facet of the business as standard — we know this because we have worked in partnership as a team to plan what both sides will do to make this happen, then as a team we follow that plan and make it happen.

Where there is a need to create new technology or new solutions we are confident that FLYdocs have the expertise to do it; both high level technical aviation staff and expert software developers.

They have their own teams in the UK, US, Hong Kong, India and the Philippines working on different areas [either technical aviation work or software development], to offer us a truly global 24 hour coverage and to be able to deliver solutions for Virgin Atlantic.

The Relationship

Adrian Ryan adds, “The process of integrating with Virgin Atlantic over the last 12-18 months has been a pleasure. We’ve worked together as equal parties with common goals, solving problems and pushing boundaries along the way. Virgin Atlantic, as our flagship development partner, will continue to have our total support throughout our working agreement during which FLYdocs will deliver company-wide benefits in Aircraft Re-deliveries, Document Management, Aircraft Management, Repair Management, Engine Management, Gear Management, APU Management, Airworthiness Management and much more.

“This is a very exciting period of growth for FLYdocs and we are looking forward to leading the way globally in finally bringing some long overdue e-tech know-how into Aircraft Documentation.”

Steve Sayers agrees, “For us at Virgin Atlantic, FLYdocs represent a refreshing ‘can do’ approach which we don’t often see in the industry. To date, everything they said they would do has been done without any fuss and exactly the way we wanted it, and in many cases they’ve gone over and above what we originally wanted in order to give us an even better service or solution than the original plan required. Virgin Atlantic has a very strong brand ethos, we like to deliver excellence to our customers and give them an experience they will find hard to match anywhere else in the marketplace. This is what FLYdocs is giving to us, and we’re delighted.” n

Photo: © John M Dibb

ABOUT VIRGIN ATLANTIC

Founded in 1984 by British entrepreneur Richard Branson as part of the Virgin Group, Virgin Atlantic Airways has grown to a major international player serving destinations on five continents from its London Gatwick base and London Heathrow. With 5.3 million passengers, Virgin was the eighth largest UK airline by passenger numbers in 2011. The airline also operates a significant cargo business.

Virgin has always prided itself on the quality of its service from the fittings on the aircraft to the standards of its cabin crew service. It is a member of the Star Alliance and enjoys some 14 code sharing arrangements around the world.

The current fleet consists of 40 aircraft: B747-400 plus A340-300 & 600 with 10 Airbus A330-300 aircraft currently entering service. Also on order are 15 Boeing 787-9 Dreamliners due to start entering service in 2014 and 6 Airbus A380s being delivered from 2015. With these aircraft, Virgin’s fleet will remain one of the youngest in the world.

Vendor Job Card

30 | VENDOR JOB CARD| AIRCRAFT IT MRO | SUMMER 2012

at IDMR Solutions In the latest of our Q&A pieces, Israel Revivo, President and CEO Inc., completes his paperless 'Vendor Job Card' for Aircraft IT.

y in 1996 and immediately began working with major airlines Israel Revivo graduated from Embry Riddle Aeronautical Universit at TowerAir where he used his skills to streamline IT such as Air France, KLM and JetBlue. His first aviation position was gies. These processes quickly resulted in several millions applications and replace manual intensive functions with new technolo and in less than two years was promoted to a director's of dollars in savings. Mr Revivo quickly climbed the corporate ladder and MROs could benefit from the same type of position reporting directly to the CEO. He understood that other airlines n Express, Atlas Air and other manufacturing companies. analysis and controls and started consulting on projects for America

What makes IDMR Solutions tick?

Aircraft IT: Your name, your job title and the name of the business?

Israel Revivo: Israel Revivo, President and CEO, IDMR Solutions Inc. Aircraft IT: How did IDMR Solutions Inc. get started?

IR: A few years into working and consulting with major airlines, it was clear to me that proper data management and controls was something that results in actual cost savings for both airlines and MROs. IDMR (Integrated Data Migration & Recovery) was born in 1998 and we started providing consulting and customized desktop applications in the aviation and manufacturing industries. In 2004 we stepped out of custom applications and turned our focus on to developing our own Document Management Platform, InForm®. InForm® gives us the ability to provide a single platform that allows companies to control virtually any document, form and manual. Today InForm® is used by airlines and MRO shops, and integrates with leading M&E providers.

Aircraft IT: What is the attraction of aircraft MRO related IT? IR: As new software is added to airplanes, bridging them to and leveraging them for the shop floor is a field that is exciting and constantly changing. As new technologies emerge we re-deploy modules and make sure our customers are getting their benefits. Our InForm® product provides a single platform where customers can create job cards, print them to the work package, then have the MRO shop electronically use and sign off the cards. Bringing documents such as Job Cards and Non-Routines directly to the mechanics on the shop floor is just the beginning and we are eager to see what is waiting for us in the coming years.

Aircraft IT: What is the guiding business principle that drives IDMR? IR: First and foremost is customer satisfaction. IDMR software evolves with our customers. Our drive is to continue to offer highly scalable, affordable and customizable solutions.

Aircraft IT: What has been IDMR’s greatest IT achievement to date, and why?

IR: Moving our customers from paper to technology.

Gone are the days when forms like Job Cards and Engineering Orders needed to be walked from office to office, re-entered in mainframes, written in word processing applications etc. We provide, simple-to-use solutions, which import OEM tasks and manuals into fully editable templates that look and feel exactly like our customers’ existing documents. InForm’s® toolset includes customizable templates, automated workflows, electronic signatures, rules & validations, seamless M&E integration and much more.

Aircraft IT: What has been IDMR’s greatest business achievement to date, and why?

IR: The ability to provide scalable and affordable enterprise solutions which integrate with both M&E providers and OEMs. Forming business relationships with M&E software providers gives us an edge in providing a single entry point solution.

AircraftIT: What have been IDMR’s disappointments and what have you learned from them?

IR: We are still disappointed in how much airlines and MROs rely on paper. There are millions of dollars spent each year on printing, distributing, and filing paper. Everyone wants the ‘dirty fingerprints’ but even that can be a thing of the past. Our challenge is in providing a truly paper-free platform, which both Airlines and MROs can adopt.

Together with our customers we are striving to achieve such milestones.

AircraftIT: In a sentence, how would you summarize what IDMR does for aircraft MRO customers?

IR: We provide a cost effective and easy-to-use platform to author and manage documents.

AircraftIT: What is new on IDMR’s development horizon?

IR: We are excited about our new web portal projects. Every week we deploy new functionalities for the portal. Our goal is to allow users, managers and QCs to easily navigate, access, view and approve documents via the web on PCs, tablets and other web enabled devices.

AircraftIT: What will be the next big thing in MRO Aviation IT? IR: Today there is a push for real-time data. Both MROs and Airlines want instant access to what is happening on the shop floor. Electronic sign offs on Job Cards and real time Non-Routine will deliver such data.

AircraftIT: What do you want your customers to say about IDMR? IR: That we listen and are there not only for fixing a bug but to better their company and the aviation industry. IDMR is dedicated to bringing new and innovative methods to help us all ‘Soar above Paper’ AircraftIT: Israel Revivo , thank you for your time.

The Airline & AerospAce Mro & FlighT operATions iT conFerence 2012 – BAngKoK, 17Th & 18Th ocToBer The World’s leading MRO and OPS IT Conference in the APAC Region for airline and independent MRO personnel involved with reviewing, selecting or using MRO & Flight Operations IT systems.

presentations including : ipad/Tablet technology in the Flight Deck eFB project Management structuring an M & e system : cMs, Documentation, engineering & e-Job card production Fuel saving Masterclass structuring an M & e system : collecting Flight operations Data, Maintenance control, collecting eFB & eTl Data, line Maintenance planning & production.

Workshops including : An ipad/Tablet strategy Masterclass An eFB Masterclass Business Analytics for the Airline Mro industry independent Auditing of Mro implementations Fuel saving Masterclass Discuss your current or new system requirements with and have demos from over 40 leading MRO and Flight Operations IT suppliers in attendance.

hear and discuss the latest industry trends and developments

Two nights free accommodation available for Aircraft Commerce airline / independent MRO company readers registering via +44 1403 230 888 or stephen@aircraft-commerce.com and quoting registration code APAC2012.

For further details on the Bangkok conference call +44 1403 230 888 or visit: www.aircraft-commerce.com/conferences

32 | WEBINARS | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | SUMMER 2012

Upcoming Live Software Demonstration Webinars at www.aircraftit.com September will bring great opportunities for readers to attend programs covering two of the leading MRO software solutions on the Market today. If you need to know more about MRO analytics and planning and/or maintenance management at all levels, you’ll save a great deal of time and gain a lot of what you’ll need to know to inform a good decision by simply attending these two informative webinars.

Hexaware Live MRO Business Analytics Software Demonstration Webinar n 6 september 2012 n Duration: 1 hour plus Q&A. n Session 1: 06:30 am GMT/UTC n Session 2: 15:00pm GMT/UTC

S

ign up for this Webinar on 6th September and join Hexaware for a live software demonstration of their specialist MRO Analytic Software solution. You will see a real-time demonstration of a web-based, modular, MRO Analytics s oftware application designed for business reporting, and planning on key maintenance issues for airlines and MROs. You will learn that, by diving deep into their maintenance data, airlines and MROs can greatly enhance their MRO decision making and planning.

You will learn how the MRO Analytics software can leverage real-time data and help prioritize activities, allocate budgets optimally and crucially bring down MRO operations costs significantly. You’ll also see how it can be seamlessly integrated into primary ERP or best-of-breeds MRO software systems for optimum performance.

Session Agenda

• • • •

• • • •

Overview of Business Intelligence trends across airline industry; MRO Analytics components; Costing Analysis by aircraft model, event types and parts; Operation Analysis - Performance statistics by location, lead time analysis, skill utilization; Inventory Analysis - Critical inventory hunt, fill rates, surplus and holding costs, slow moving parts, aircraft aging: BI roadmap for MRO Industry; Enabling Analytics Dashboards for your MRO Business in 8 weeks; Q&A.

Webinar Overview

Sign up to join this Webinar for a live demonstration of Hexaware’s MRO Analytics, a web-based modular suite designed for business reporting, and planning on key maintenance objective for Airlines and MRO providers.

Built with industry inputs, Hexaware MRO Analytics solution framework delivers versatile reporting and analytics capability with seamless integration to your primary ERP and third party MRO systems. Hexaware’s MRO Analytics Pack enables users to dive deep into their maintenance data and build management dashboards, thus aiding quick decision making.

This aviation industry specific offering is accessible through a web portal, and is easily customizable and scalable to user requirements.

With its ability to leverage real time details and easy manoeuvrability, Hexaware’s MRO Analytics Pack delivers high end performance measurement and decision support which help prioritize activities, allocate budgets optimally and bring down the MRO operations cost significantly.

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CLICK HERE to VIEW FULL DETAILS AND SIGN UP FOR THIS FREE WEBINAR

SUMMER 2012 | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | WEBINARS | 33

Sign up to free live online software demonstrations for a perfect introduction to the world’s leading MRO Software vendors and to learn how they can assist and add value to your operations

Live MRO Software demonstration of TRAX Maintenance Software n 13 SEPTEMBER 2012 n Duration: 1 hour plus Q&A. n Session 1: 06:30 am GMT/UTC n Session 2: 15:00pm GMT/UTC

S

ign up for this Webinar on the 13th of September and join TRAX for a live software demonstration of their industry leading maintenance software solution for airlines and third party MROs. You will be taken on a tour of the different modules and the rich functionality the software provides with a particular focus on Aircraft and Material Planning and Inventory, and Optimization.

This Webinar will provide you with the chance to see a high-level review of this industry leading software solution and see why the TRAX M&E Software solution is used by over 110 companies worldwide.

Session Agenda

• • • •

General Overview of Software; Aircraft and Material Planning; Inventory and Optimization; Advanced features including 3rd Party MRO.

Who should attend?

This webinar is ideal for airline/MRO personnel working in any area, maintenance executives and decision makers.

Full Webinar Preview

This Webinar shows you a live demonstration of TRAX’s MRO solution and reveals how TRAX enables airlines and Third Party MRO’s to provide the best quality, safest and most cost efficient services to their personnel and customers.

Introduction

Trax is committed to providing the best possible software solutions and service to their customers around the world. The Trax Maintenance and Engineering solution has been developed with over 110 customers to provide what is one of the most comprehensive and advanced maintenance software solution available today, with the best sales and implementation record of any M&E solution provider ever.

Trax Maintenance is a fully integrated product, which allows complete information flow between the modules in the system.

The software will provide the means to manage and maintain all information generated by a maintenance organization while improved efficiency and reduction of costs will be achieved through use of the product.

This Webinar shows you a live demonstration of the overall Software package and then drills down further to show you in more detail some of the key modules.

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34 | CASE STUDY: AIRBUS | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | SUMMER 2012

I

n 2018, the value of the Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) market is projected to reach $140 billion (Ref: Stewart 09). To gain market share, aircraft manufacturers will have to differentiate themselves from the market norm by offering their customers a way to fly more hours with the lowest operating (exploitation) and maintenance costs.

The challenge

While considering the development of a new aircraft program and the duration of the aircraft in service phase (more than 30 years), manufacturers tend to look for the following objectives: • Significantly shorten the development cycle to reduce costs and produce aircraft that match the latest stateof-the-art.

• Reduce pollution to achieve socially acceptable levels of environmental responsibility.

• Offer a reliable way to track and trace configurations (as-designed, as-built, as-maintained and as-flying) to ease the aircraft configuration management burden for the OEMs, MROs, airlines and operators.

• Develop turnkey and integrated solutions for reducing aircraft downtime, supplying parts when and where needed, and providing technical assistance and training to aircraft operators.

• Provide authorities with in-time relevant data for continuous airworthiness management.

In order to fulfill these objectives it is necessary to be able to retrieve and exchange relevant information between all aircraft life-cycle stakeholders. Additionally, manufacturers can obtain feedback from experience and in service data to optimize the design, reduce costs and improve environmental performance to more acceptable levels.

The solution

Getting high value by spreading IT services Interconnecting heterogeneous information systems, says Dr Franck Duluc, Engineering & Maintenance Research Manager at Airbus, is a way to enable our customers to fly more with the lowest operating and maintenance costs

It was with this in mind that Airbus teamed up with aircraft manufacturers, MRO centers, information and technology providers as well as recognized laboratories to work on SIMID (Système d’Information de Maintenance Intégré et Distribué — in English ‘Integrated and Distributed Maintenance Information System’), an innovative research and development project. Launched in March 2011 for a three-year term and with an overall budget of more than $8 million (€6 million), SIMID aims to provide a demonstrator for a secure and scalable system enabling the interconnection of heterogeneous information systems as an enabler for MRO stakeholders to propose valuable services and contributing to: • Increased aircraft availability; • Reduced operating and maintenance costs; • Increased flight safety.

SUMMER 2012 | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | CASE STUDY: AIRBUS | 35 2moroAnnoncePresse1112.pdf

“Nowadays our job must go beyond helicopters sales and support. We have to follow aircraft business evolution trends in order to simultaneously help our customers in reducing their exploitation and maintenance costs while increasing our turnover and efficiency.” — EADS Eurocopter.

“The size of the Falcon fleet has significantly increased these past 10 years and will keep growing as all other business-jets fleets. MRO centers network is evolving accordingly. For Dassault Aviation, SIMID is intended to be a key differentiator to scale MRO network properly and provide efficient support with high quality standards.” — Dassault Aviation “SIMID will help us in strengthening our partnership with our providers and customers. This will lead to the optimization of our business approach and increase our customers’ satisfaction.” — Mr. Jérôme Thulliez, Industrial & Quality Director, EQUIP’AERO SERVICES.

M

J

CM

MJ

SIMID Key technical challenges consist in: • Interconnecting heterogeneous information systems: stakeholders in the aircraft maintenance process are numerous and all using different information systems (different purposes, different technologies, and different standards and processes).

• Providing a secure, scalable and flexible system: SIMID’s key focus is on reducing, or even deleting, any integration costs while offering a business opportunities enabler. Additionally, SIMID aims to develop new services but without the expenditure of effort and money in redesigning existing information systems architecture.

• Coping with a high volume of data: aircraft maintenance data are often very big data sets and are subject to numerous updates and exchanges.

• Performing distributed data mining tasks: information search and analysis often involve data that are produced or stored by different information systems.

• Promoting win-win cooperation between MRO stakeholders through a better use and exchange of the aircraft maintenance data.

SIMIDs technical approach is based on: • Data rationalization and standardization.

• Generating connectors capable of interconnecting heterogeneous information systems such as PDM (Product Data Management), ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), MIS (Maintenance Information Systems).

• Distributed data mining algorithms.

16:12:56

Click here for full SOFTWARE details and for a demo

C

Figure 1: SIMID concept overview

11/01/12

CJ

CMJ

N

36 | CASE STUDY: AIRBUS | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | SUMMER 2012

“… manufacturers can obtain feedback from experience and in service data to optimize the design, reduce costs and improve environmental performance to more acceptable levels” SIMID PARTNERS

Airbus www.airbus.com Toulouse, France

Dassault Aviation www.dassault-aviation.com Paris, France

Eurocopter www.eurocopter.com Marignane, France

Equip’Aero Services www.equipaero.com L’Isle-Jourdain, France

IMS www.ims-bordeaux.fr Bordeaux, France

LaBRI www.labri.fr

Bordeaux, France

2MoRO Solutions www.2moro.com Bidart, France

Vinci Consulting www.vinci-consulting.com Toulouse, France

SIMID IS CO-FUNDED BY

Competitivite.gouv.fr www.competitivite.gouv.fr Région Aquitaine www.aquitaine.fr Conseil Général des Pyrénées-Atlantiques www.cg64.fr Région Midi Pyrenees www.midipyrenees.fr

In practice

The demonstrator will be tested and validated through application to several use cases, which gather together the experiences of several MRO stakeholders.

These use cases are: • Aircraft configuration control and management: configuration control and management is key to MRO activities as it conditions, among other things, the continuous airworthiness monitoring, the spares management and allowance, and the quality of the Technical Data.

• Aircraft repairs collection and management: airworthiness authorities are becoming increasingly stringent on the repairs recording and management.

• In-service event data collection: real-time follow-up of aircraft events will enable a faster preparation and answer to any problems that occur. Data required for decision making are often located in different places (information systems and/or stakeholders) • Scheduled maintenance follow-up and optimization: nowadays maintenance planning update and optimization often require a heavy data collection process which can, in turn, work to the detriment of update cycles and optimization justification to the authorities. Also, with more data the different operators’ profiles may be better taken into account in the maintenance planning process.

The following tables and figure sum up the second case (aircraft repairs collection and management) as an example:

The different use-cases have been modeled using Business Process Modeling Notation] (BPMN) and a SIMID actor has been identified enabling the identifications of the services that are to be provided through the SIMID platform. A scenario has also been described for the use-case.

Through this scenario (not the most complex one that might be encountered) it can be understood that a lot of people and a lot of information systems are interacting and exchanging a lot of data.

Many interfaces have to be put in place and if they are not available a lot of activity is lost in paperwork or multiple keying in within the various information systems. Also, in the case of stakeholders’ changes these interfaces often have to be rebuilt.

With the approach as defined by SIMID… • The interaction between the different stakeholders and their information systems will be facilitated and therefore will be faster and cheaper.

• Integrating new stakeholders or services will be possible at the lowest cost.

Conclusion

After its first year, SIMID will run for two more years to define and demonstrate a solution fulfilling its objectives. All partners are contributing enthusiastically to the project and would agree with the following words from Eva Randria, 2MoRO Solutions, R&D Project — Innovation Manager: “SIMID is a turnkey solution to spread out IT MRO services in

JULIA

Air Alfa – Airline Maintenance Support department.

Aircraft exploitation – performs some aircraft maintenance and repair tasks.

BOB

Beta industry – MRO center It has a contract with Air Alfa to perform their aircraft scheduled maintenance tasks and heavy repairs.

PETER

Aircraft manufacturer – Support engineering department In charge of designing a certified repair solution Figure 2: SIMID use case: the stakeholders

SUMMER 2012 | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | CASE STUDY: AIRBUS | 37

order to increase MRO stakeholders’ efficiency and competitiveness. Since our creation in 2004, our R&D team has been working on technology and services to comply with current and future Aerospace and Defense (A&D) trends. Today, we are proud to bring our experience and technology to make SIMID an upcoming reality”. n

Reference

(Stewart 09) Stewart, D., AeroStrategy (2009). “The attractiveness of the aeronautics Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) and its segmentation.”

SIMID use case: example of Repair use-case BPMN model (SIMID action in the lower layer) (above). Example of Scenario (below).

Step

Action

1

Execution

Interface

Description

Step

Action

During some scheduled maintenance execution at Beta Industry, the damage is detected.

11

A/C Manufacturer

2

Execution

Bob, maintenance worker characterized the damage and its location.

3

Execution

Bob assesses that the damage is above the limits given by the Structure Repair Manual. There is no way to release or repair the aircraft without contacting the aircraft manufacturer.

4

Execution

SIMID (to Support)

Through SIMID, Bob informs Air Alpha Maintenance Support department of the damage and the need to contact the aircraft manufacturer.

Interface

Description Peter analyses the damage and defines the repair procedure, which is approved under the A/C manufacturer DOA.

12

A/C SIMID (to Manufacturer Support)

Through SIMID, Peter sends the repair instructions to air Alpha.

13

Support

SIMID (from A/C Manufacturer)

Julia receives the repair instructions

14

Support

SIMID (to Execution)

Through SIMID, Julia transfers the repair instructions to Bob.

15

Execution

SIMID (from Support)

Bob receives the repair instructions

16

Support

Julia prepares, in the Air Alpha MIS, the configuration change consecutive to the repair (replacement of a structure part).

17

Execution

Beta Industry embodies the proposed repair.

Dr Franck Duluc

Engineering & Maintenance Research Manager, Airbus.

Having graduated from INSA Toulouse (1995) and holding a PhD diploma in Computer Sciences/ Database from the Toulouse University, Franck Duluc has worked for Airbus for 16 years in different activities related to Engineering and Maintenance activities. He is responsible for R&T activities within the Engineering and Maintenance department of Airbus Customer Services as well as the definition and alignment of Airbus Customer Services’ R&T activities with the defined strategy. A lot of these activities are considering the various internal and external information systems that support the day-to-day activities of Airbus Customer Services, its customers and the MROs. Major issues are interfacing the different information systems bricks and the data standardization, reuse and analysis.

5

Execution

SIMID (to Support)

Bob sends through SIMID the damage information he has collected to the Maintenance Support.

6

Support

SIMID (from Execution)

Julia, Air Alpha Maintenance Support, receives the notification and the damage information.

7

Support

Julia acknowledges that the damage is above the limits and that the aircraft manufacturer has to be contacted and provided with the information.

18

Execution

SIMID (to Support and A/C Manufacturer)

Through SIMID, Bob sends the maintenance execution report for the repair together with the configuration change.

Franck Duluc has also participated in different Industry standardization bodies (ATA and ASD) and is currently involved in the AIA/ASD ILS Handbook standardization group (Integrated Logistic Support – ASD SX000i).

8

Support

Julia writes a damage report from the information she has collected from Beta Industry.

19

Support

SIMID (from Execution)

Julia receives the information related to the repair execution (configuration change and job card completion) and stores them.

ASK THE AUTHOR A QUESTION

9 10

Support

SIMID (to A/C Manufacturer)

A/C SIMID (from Manufacturer Support)

Through SIMID, Julia sends its report to the A/C manufacturer.

Peter, Customer Services engineer at A/C manufacturer, receives the report.

20

A/C SIMID (from Manufacturer Support)

A/C Manufacturer receives the information related to the repair execution (configuration change and job card completion) and stores them.

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SUMMER 2012 | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | SOFTWARE DIRECTORY | 39

MRO Software Directory Key ‘at-a-glance’ information from the world’s leading MRO software providers.

There are three recognized categories of MRO software solutions: 1) Pure-play MRO solutions also known as Best of Breed (BoB) 2) Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Solutions 3) Specialist Point Solutions Software solutions assigned to categories 1 & 2 offer a complete endto-end MRO solution for airlines, MROs and aircraft operators and meet most business system requirements for MRO facilities and airlines of any size seeking a new MRO software solution or looking to replace or renew an existing one.

Pure-play systems are designed specifically for the aviation MRO industry and typically offer a complete solution to fit with the highly regulated nature of the industry. ERP MRO Solutions are part of a complete end-to-end enterprise wide software package and allow for extended capability with other systems such as Finance and Human Resources.

Specialist Point solutions are MRO systems that are particularly strong in certain niche areas and usually complement the pure-play solutions.

For ease of reference the directory below is divided into two sections: Pure-play and ERP MRO Solutions; and Specialist Point Solutions

Pureplay, BoB and ERP MRO Solutions

2MoRO Solutions

W: www.2moro.com T: +33 (0)559 013 005 (EMEA & Asia) T: +001 514 861 8686 (Americas) E: 2moro@2moro.com

Company formed: 2004, Office Location: France (HQ) and Canada Name of Product Marketed • Aero One®, Aero-Webb®, BFly® Number of Modules.........6 Five Key Business/Software Areas • Fleet Management • Technical Referential Management • Maintenance Forecasting • Inspection, Sentencing, Workbench • Configuration Control

Created in 2004, 2MoRO Solutions is an innovative company dedicated to software development for the Aerospace & Defense market (operational and R&D needs). We are located in America and in Europe. Our solutions are operated in 17 countries. We provide three high value products: Aero-One®, Aero-Webb®, BFly®. We have partnership with the world best of class ERP and PLM software providers, SAP® and PTC®. Our products are fully integrated with ERP offering cross functionalities: Accounting, Financials, Sales, Purchasing , Operations, Inventory & Distribution. We offer specific A&D functionalities: Fleet Management, Technical Referential Mgt, Maintenance Forecasting, Maintenance Execution, Inspection & Sentencing, Configuration Control, CRM & CSM.

Click Here for Software Details Click Here to Request Private Demo

ADSoftware

W: www.adsoftware.fr T: +33 (0)4.50.89.48.50 E: contact@adsoftware.fr

Company formed: 1998, Office Location: France, Thailand, South Africa, Brazil Name of Product Marketed • AIRPACK Number of Modules.........6 Five Key Business/Software Areas • AIRTIME - Fleet management & CAMO • AIRSTOCK - Inventory control & Logistic • AIRDOC - Documentation management • AIRSTAT - Reliability and statistic reports • AIRWORK - Time Tracking Software ADSoftware has developed an integrated fleet management system and logistic package called AIRPACK. This 6 modules system replies to the needs of aircraft and helicopters operators, as well as MRO and CAMO centres. It meets all requirements in terms of functionality, traceability, performance, aviation legislation and regulations. Today, ADSoftware counts more than 45 clients worldwide. The strength of ADSoftware is the simplicity of its products; they are Microsoft Windows® ready, Web-enabled, available in various languages and a complete training can be done in just five days. The company also provides a 24/7 online technical support and extremely competitive pricing conditions.

Click Here for Software Details Click Here to Request Private Demo Click here for full SOFTWARE details and for a demo

40 | SOFTWARE DIRECTORY | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | SUMMER 2012

ADT - Applied Database Technology

W: www.adbtech.com T: +1 (425) 466-5013 +1 (614) 377-9644 E: sales@adbtech.com

Company formed: 1992, Office Location: Bellevue, Tampa USA; Istanbul, Turkey Name of Product Marketed • Wings NG Number of Modules.........14 Five Key Business/Software Areas • Fleet Management • Maintenance Engineering • Material Management • Production Planning • Labor Collection, Billing APPLIED DATABASE TECHNOLOGY (ADT) is a professional services and software development firm that provides MRO software solutions for aircraft operators as well as aircraft repair and overhaul organizations. Our commitment to this business segment is proven with our software package, WINGS, designed specifically for the aerospace companies. ADT has been in the software business since 1992 and built an excellent customer reference base. Our first priority is always customer satisfaction thus we have obtained 100% customer satisfaction since 1992. ADT has a proven record to develop reference accounts in the Aviation industry along with other high technology companies which are considered to be leaders in their fields.

Click Here for Software Details Click Here to Request Private Demo Click here for full SOFTWARE details and for a demo

AeroSoft Systems Inc.

AV BASE SYSTEMS

W: www.aerosoftsys.com T: +1 905.678.9564 E: sales@aerosoftsys.com

W: www.avbasesystems.com T: +1 519-691-0919 E: info@avbasesystems.com

Company formed: 1997, Office Location: Mississauga,Ontario, Canada; Miami,FL,USA; Austria

Company formed: 1997, Office Location: Mississauga,Ontario, Canada; Miami,FL,USA; Austria

Name of Product Marketed • DigiMAINT, DigiDOC, WebPMI/DJM Number of Modules.........5

Name of Product Marketed • WinAir Essentials; WinAir Express; WinAir Pro-SQL; and WinAir Enterprise Number of Modules.........5

Five Key Business/Software Areas • Maintenance and Engineering Management • Digital Document Content Management • Business Intelligence Reporting • Business 2 Business transaction interface • Interface to Financials / Flight Operations AeroSoft Systems Inc. is unique in MRO/IT, born in 1997, out of aircraft OEM digital document systems and the evolution of ATA iSPEC2200 and SPEC2000 standards. AeroSoft has two distinct MRO/IT products: DigiMAINT and WebPMI sharing a common set of optional modules for BI, B2B, Finance and Flight Operations, plus DigiDOC, a state of the art digital content management system. AeroSoft has the unique expertise to integrate DigiDOC with any competitive MRO/IT system. AeroSoft’s strategic partners include Hexaware Technologies Inc. who are jointly going to market internationally offering large IT capacity at competitive rates.

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Five Key Business/Software Areas • Complex Maintenance Programs / Configuration Management • Aircraft and Internal Shop Production • Inventory Control & Procurement • Opertational Administration • Reliability Module AV-BASE Systems develops and supports the successful series of WinAir maintenance and inventory software solutions. With over 20 years committed to the aviation industry, WinAir is a proven solution to increase operational efficiency and harmonize departments in even the most complex operations. The WinAir Series includes 24/7 technical support, top tier help and documentation, as well as professional training and implementation options. WinAir users span the globe and include Airlines, Government Operations, MROs, Military Operations, Law Enforcement Agencies, Corporate Aviation Firms, and Aviation Services such as Medical Evacuation organizations. Visit www.avbasesystems.com for a solution that works in the real world.

Click Here for Software Details Click Here to Request Private Demo

SUMMER 2012 | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | SOFTWARE DIRECTORY | 41

Cimber Air Data AS

W: www.amicos.com T: +45 7443 3222 E: sales@amicos.com

Company formed: 1985, Office Location: Denmark Name of Product Marketed • AMICOS Next Generation Number of Modules.........n/a Five Key Business/Software Areas • Maintenance & Engineering / MRO • Logistics and Procurement • Reliability & Statistics • Planning • Manpower & Cost control 25 years of successful design, development and implementation makes Cimber Air Data (CAD) one of the most seasoned players in the business. Our staff averages over 15 years of experience in Aviation MRO. Close contact with our customers assure that we are constantly up to date with the latest developments and business requirements. When you talk to CAD staff, you are talking to a proficient Aviation Professional. Cimber Air Data is a profitable company, and we are constantly developing the product.

The AMICOS NG (Next Generation) MRO system is an affordable ‘Enterprise’ solution exclusively developed for Aviation. Our focus is on in-depth functionality and total process control. The diversity of our customers and their business processes ensures that AMICOS covers almost any possible variation of MRO data management.

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Communications Software (Airline Systems) Ltd

W: www.commsoft.aero T: +44 (0) 1621 817 425 E: nsg@commsoft.aero

Company formed: 1971, Office Location: Tiptree, Derby, Norwich, Gatwick, UK; Brisbane, Australia; Coimbatore, India Name of Product Marketed • OASES Number of Modules.........10 Five Key Business/Software Areas • User Friendly - ease of use for all levels of expertise • Excellent Support - full support throughout the life cycle of the product • Scalability - can grow with your business • Cost - low ‘cost of ownership’ • Security - proven security Communications Software Ltd provides the Open Aviation Strategic Engineering System (OASES), covering all aspects of aircraft maintenance for airlines and third-party maintainers. Areas covered include: inventory control; rotable tracking; demand handling; requirements planning; PO and RO processing; component and aircraft technical records; maintenance forecasting; aircraft check planning and documentation, plus check accomplishment analysis; aircraft technical log recording; shop floor data collection; work in progress; time and attendance monitoring; and system and component reliability analysis, plus repetitive defects, sales order processing, full quotation management, invoice passing, advanced scheduling, line maintenance control, AD/SB evaluation and deferred defect management. The company provides electronic AMMs and IPCs linked electronically to, and accessible by, the system.

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IFR FRANCE

W: www.ifrfrance.com T: +33 (0) 562 74 75 00 E: commercial@ifrfrance.com

Company formed: 1987 Office Location: Toulouse (HQ); Moscow (Rep); Singapore (Rep); Bogota (Rep) Name of Product Marketed • AMASIS Number of Modules.........13 Five Key Business/Software Areas • Line Maintenance • Base Maintenance • Engineering • Procurement / Stores • Business Intelligence AMASIS is a robust turnkey solution to manage and optimize the aircraft maintenance. With 80+ active customers, AMASIS is a reliable solution for operators with fleets of all sizes and MRO. The new interface and the integrated Business Intelligence module (optional) brings to users the right tools to improve the maintenance processes.

Our experts propose high level services to assit users during the implementation phase and the day to day operations (customizations, data upload, training, audit).

Click Here for Software/Product Details Click Here to Request Private Demo Click here for full SOFTWARE details and for a demo

growing success...

The flexible, professional MRO system

Commsoft’s OASES MRO system offers comprehensive professional functionality together with a flexible, affordable approach that understands your business’ scaleable growth needs in today’s turbulent market.

Each OASES module can be offered individually or can be integrated at the engineering centre of your business systems.

Over 50 current aviation users, including airlines and MROs, spares suppliers, CAMO, corporate and bureau operators have grown their success with us.

info@commsoft.aero +44(0)1621 817425 www.commsoft.aero

42 | SOFTWARE DIRECTORY | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | SUMMER 2012

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Lufthansa Technik AG

Ramco Systems

W: www.lufthansa-technik.com/manage-m T: +49 69 696 91628 E: info@manage-m.com

W: www.ramcoaviation.com T: +1 305 538 8499 E: agatag@rsc.ramco.com

Lufthansa Technik’s unique Technical Operations WebSuite manage/m® allows commercial aircraft operators to manage all core functions of their fleet’s technical operations as an entirely web-based system online – anytime and anywhere. manage/m® is provided at no extra costs to every customer holding a MRO contract with Lufthansa Technik.

Rounding out Lufthansa Technik’s all-encompassing portfolio of maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services, the modules of manage/m® comprise a complete range of airline-proven support functions that permit operators to live up to their responsibilities towards the aviation authorities.

Reflecting Lufthansa Technik’s MRO competence in all of its facets, manage/m® provides you with the necessary information to live up to your responsibilities as an operator in full. Quality monitoring, reliability trends, status reports, documentation and tracking of shop events in real-time are just a few of the available WebServices.

Ramco Systems is the world’s largest provider of Aviation M&E, MRO and Manufacturing software solutions designed from the ground up for Commercial Passenger and Cargo, Military, PBL, PBM, Fixed Wing & Rotor, Fleet Operators, MRO providers and OEM organizations. The solutions are offered On-premise (in-house), through an Application Service Provider, or OnDemand utilizing its solutions and automation tools in running lean, efficient and profitable operations.

Ramco’s Series 5 provides a positive impact on reducing turn times while increasing operational performance and compliance through the full integration of engineering, supply chain, maintenance planning and execution, and compliance modules in an elegant graphical interface.

Company formed: 1995, Office Location: Worldwide Name of Product Marketed • manage/m® Number of Modules.........15 Five Key Business/Software Areas • Compliance Reporting • MPD management and revision service • Task scheduling and control • Material management • Management of technical findings (PiRep & MaRep)

Click Here for Software Details Click Here to Request Private Demo

Mxi Technologies

W: www.mxi.com T: +1 613-747-4698 E: info@mxi.com

Company formed: 1996, Office Location: USA, Canada, Europe, Middle East, Africa, India, Asia-Pacific, Singapore, Malaysia Name of Product Marketed • Ramco Aviation Enterprise Solution, Ramco Aviation M&E solution, Ramco Aviation MRO Solution, Ramco Aviation Analytics, Ramco Electronic Flight Bag(EFB), Ramco ePublications, Ramco Aviation Manufacturing OnDemand, Ramco eProcurement Number of Modules.........20 Five Key Business/Software Areas • Maintenance & Engineering • Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul • Aviation Manufacturing and Repair Stations • Human Resources • Finance

Click Here for Software Details Click Here to Request Private Demo

Company formed: 1996, Office Location: Ottawa, Amsterdam,Detroit, Seattle, Washington, Sydney, Tampa, Saudi Arabia Name of Product Marketed • Maintenix, Maintenix CE Number of Modules.........5 Five Key Business/Software Areas • Maintenance Engineering & Information Management • Maintenance Planning • Maintenance Execution • Material management • Business Support & Analytics With solutions designed specifically for aviation maintenance, Mxi Technologies provides integrated and intelligent software, support, and services to commercial airlines, MROs, OEM aftermarket service providers, and defense operators. Mxi Technologies’ Maintenix® software uses a modern architecture and provides advanced capabilities such as a role-based Web browser interface, long range and automated line planning, automated workflow, electronic signatures, support for portable wireless devices, and a comprehensive range of integration APIs. Our customers range from emerging, small to midsized organizations to the largest global enterprises. For more information and to find out how you can join the evolution of aviation maintenance, visit www.mxi.com today.

Click Here for Software Details Click Here to Request Private Demo

Rusada SA

W: www.rusada.com T: 03333 440730 E: sales@rusada.com

Company formed: 1987, Office Location: Europe, Middle East, Asia, Far East Name of Product Marketed • Envision Number of Modules.........10 (Single database) Five Key Business/Software Areas • Technical records and Asset Management • Asset and Stock Management • Operations • Engineering & Maintenance • Quality, Safety and Analytics Rusada is a global leader in the development of complex asset management software for the aerospace industry. With over 20 year’s heritage, Rusada, provides a range of tools and integrated IT solutions to enable the complete management of fleets of aircraft and the optimisation of the service provision around them. Headquartered in Switzerland with operations in the Far East, Middle East, Asia and Europe, Rusada serves over 60 major customers worldwide, spanning clients that include Operators, MROs and OEMs. Rusada’s Envision toolkit is an industry benchmark within aviation, managing over 1500 aircraft in 20 countries. Latest innovations include the development of an Analytical Manager for live KPI analysis and monitoring against thresholds via a web based dashboard, and a new Safety Management Module designed to assist with a company’s Safety Management Procedures.

Click Here for Software Details Click Here to Request Private Demo

SUMMER 2012 | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | SOFTWARE DIRECTORY | 43

Sheorey Digital Systems Ltd.

W: www.sds.co.in

T: (+91-22) 2281 9198/ 2281 1086 E: rohit.jha@sds.co.in E: vicky.sheorey@sds.co.in

Company formed: 1993, Office Location: Mumbai, Bangalore, Singapore Name of Product Marketed • ARMS®: Airline Resource Management System, InfoPrompt®: Integrated Document Management System Number of Modules.........4 Five Key Business/Software Areas • Engineering & Maintenance Sub-System (ARMS® - EMSS) • Heavy MRO Sub-System (ARMS® HMRO)* • Logistics & Inventory Management Sub-System (ARMS® LIMSS) • InfoPrompt®: Integrated Document Management System * Under development Sheorey Digital Systems Ltd., (SDS), is an established, fast growing, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Software Company, focused on providing Software Solutions to the Aviation Industry. ARMS®: ‘Airline Resource Management System’ is an internet rich, current-generation, state-of-the-art Information Technology System that effectively addresses the extremely critical and cost sensitive nature of Airlines/Commercial Air Transport operations. ARMS® is one of the few cost-effective, fully integrated software solutions that seamlessly addresses – Flight Operations, Maintenance and Logistics functions of an air transport operator - designed and developed to control costs which is so very critical for Air Operators today! ARMS® is readily and easily ‘customizable’ to specific business & operational requirements.

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Swiss AviationSoftware Ltd.

W: www.swiss-as.com

T: +41 61 582 72 94 E: marketing@swiss-as.com

Company formed: 2004 (project AMOS started in 1989), Office Location: Basel, Switzerland; Miami, FL, USA Name of Product Marketed • AMOS Number of Modules.........10 Five Key Business/Software Areas • Material Management • Engineering • Planning • Production • Maintenance Control Swiss AviationSoftware unites over 20 years of IT experience with profound MRO expertise and offers its customers the functionally unsurpassed and technologically state-of-the art maintenance system AMOS. AMOS is a comprehensive, fully-integrated software package that successfully manages the maintenance, engineering and logistics requirements of modern airlines and MRO providers by fulfilling demanding airworthiness standards.

Today, almost 100 customers worldwide steer their maintenance activities with AMOS, which makes AMOS the industry-leading MRO software in Europe and one of the best-selling solutions globally.

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TRAX USA Corp.

W: www.trax.aero T: +1 305.662.7400 E: sales@trax.aero

Company formed: 1997, Office Location: Miami, Fl, USA; Horsham, West Sussex, UK Name of Product Marketed • TRAX Maintenance & Engineering Software Number of Modules.........23 Five Key Business/Software Areas • Engineering & Planning • Production & Shop • Technical Records & Reliability • TRAXDoc Document Control • Supply Chain Management TRAX is the global leader in the aviation Maintenance and Engineering software industry. Deployed at airlines with fleets of all sizes, TRAX is the most advanced maintenance software solution available today.

TRAX Maintenance has been developed with Airlines and for Airlines.

Consisting of over 20 modules, TRAX Maintenance is a completely integrated product. Organizational efficiency gains can be substantial when using TRAX and ROI is quickly realized. TRAX maintains its advantage over the competition by developing software that works for customers through modern technology and world class support.

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Volartec

W: www.volartec.aero

T: +353 617 49010 E: marketing@volartec.aero

Company formed: 2004, Office Location: Ireland; Argentina Name of Product Marketed • Alkym ® Management & Control System for Aircraft Maintenance Number of Modules.........15

Specialist Point Solutions

AIRCRAFT DATA SYSTEMS (ADS)

W: www.technicalrecords.net W: www.adsfrance.net T: +33 (0) 975 333 675 E: jalbrecht@technicalrecords.net

Company formed: 2005, Office Location: Nîmes, France Name of Product Marketed • ADS TRM (Technical Records Management), ADS TPA (Technical Publication Authoring) Number of Modules.........5 Five Key Business/Software Areas • Searchable Dirty Finger Print • 7 OCR engines • 3 seconds or less to find a 25 years old log book page with its exact content • Scan in Color, high definition • EN-9100 Our software can be tailored upon customer requirement. This allows us to input and organize records in any architecture in order to meet the exact requirements and internal rules of our customers. The records presentation shape is established just as the customer wishes.

A mechanic, a financial assessor or a leasing company representative don’t have the same needs to collect and explore records but will be interested in the same content of data. Once scanned, the records can be presented, searched and exported in any customized way.

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AVIATION 42

W: www.aviation42.com T: 0048 71 7230109 E: steve.crabb@aviation42.com

Alkym® is the most comprehensive and cost-effective software solutions available in the market today.

It is specially designed to improve MRO Technical Operations performance by a professional team with strong aviation background. Alkym® is a completely integrated software solution to meet the demands of Aircraft operators and MRO providers.

Company formed: 2009; Office Location: Poland, UK, Denmark and Switzerland Name of Product Marketed • AMOS / Envision Data Migration - Check Optimiser Software Development System Integration - Middleware - Sabre Reporting - RADIXX Interfaces FAST Fatigue Data extracts Five Key Business/Software Areas • AMOS Data Migration • Check Optimiser • Software Development • System Integration • Middleware

The key difference is our proven ability to deliver the fastest ROI. This is achieved by providing all the functionality at a fraction of the cost of others on the market. We deliver the implementation project in record time with a dedicated team. Typically this is done in 4 to 5 weeks.

Aviation42 is a software company focused on providing Airlines with highly skilled, cost effective solutions in: Data migration (AMOS , Envision); Custom software development; Data Migration; System Integration; and Middleware.

Five Key Business/Software Areas • Maintenance & Engineering • Logistics • Quality Assurance / Human Resources • Planning & Reliability • Document Management / Technical Library

Click Here for Software Details Click Here to Request Private Demo

Click Here for Software Details Click Here to Request Private Demo

44 | SOFTWARE DIRECTORY | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | SUMMER 2012

AVIIT

W: www.aviit.com T: +44 (0) 1383 620922 E: info@aviit.com

Company formed: 2004, Office Location: Fife, Scotland Name of Product Marketed • eMan & Archimedes Number of Modules.........2 Five Key Business/Software Areas • Technical publications Distribution - eMan • Document Acknowledment - eMan Read & Sign • ACARS data management - Archimedes • ACARS Technical Consultancy • IT systems management & support AviiT is exclusively focused on the provision of software solutions to the aviation sector. eMan provides an efficient capability for the distribution of technical publications across the maintenance and repair estate.

Used by aircraft operators and 3rd party MROs alike, eMan unlocks the benefits of smooth and efficient distribution of engineering and process documentation. eMan is available as an on-premise or hosted offering for complete deployment flexibility. Drawing upon data sources such as ACARS, Archimedes provides a powerful capability to capture, analyse and present valuable, real time data in a clear and flexible format to Operation and Engineering teams.

Click Here for Software Details Click Here to Request Private Demo

EmpowerMX

W: www.empowermx.com T: +1 866-498-3702 E: info@empowermx.com

Company formed: 1999, Office Location: Minnesota, USA Name of Product Marketed • Fleetcycle MRO Suite, Fleetcycle Execution Suite Number of Modules.........8 Five Key Business/Software Areas • Maintenance Program Manager (FCMPM) • Planning Manager (FCPM) / Materials Manager (FCMM) • MRO Manager (FCXM) • Production Manager (FCXP) / Reliability Manager (FCRM) • Line Manager (FCXL) / Maintenance Intelligence (FCMI) FleetCycle® MRO ERP allows MROs, airlines, lessors and any aviation maintenance entities to effectively manage the entire maintenance lifecycle or portions of the lifecycle for which they are responsible.

Airlines can jointly manage their outsourced and all insourced activities like Engineering Reliability, QA, Maintenance Programs, at the line, heavy, and shop levels. FleetCycle® ERP can significant reduce cycle times and enhance labor productivity to the order of 16%-30% and reduced costs, as well as increased aircraft availability, and reduced delays and cancellations. Third party MROs can run their entire operation of contracting and bidding on an aircraft to invoice the customer. FleetCycle® MRO ERP is the only tool currently available in the market place that reaches down to the technician on the floor and completely automates the process.

Intelligence gathered with this system provides an accurate, timely basis for dramatic improvements in the efficiency and integrity of maintenance processes and the forecasted availability of aircraft.

Click Here for Software Details Click Here to Request Private Demo

Enigma

W: www.enigma.com T: +1 781-273-3600 E: infous@enigma.com

Company formed: 1992, Office Location: Burlington, MA USA; Singapore; London, UK; Tokyo, Japan; Hertzlia, Israel; Stockholm, Sweden, Name of Product Marketed • InService MRO, InService Job Card Generator, InService Revision Manager, Enigma 3C Number of Modules.........n/a Five Key Business/Software Areas • MRO Technical Documentation Delivery • Revision Management/Control • Job/Task Card Automation • Illustrated Parts Catalogs • Service and Parts Documentation Enigma solutions help airlines and MRO facilities reduce costs and improve service efficiency and consistency by providing maintenance technicians with the latest maintenance manuals, spare parts and service information, filtered by tail number. Enigma takes data from enterprise applications – such as MRO Planning and Engineering, ERP, etc. – and creates an interactive maintenance solution that delivers the latest service, parts, and diagnostic information. By offering dynamic, integrated parts and service information, and links to inventory, order management and other systems, Enigma enables engineers to quickly update and distribute technical publications, and technicians to swiftly perform maintenance and repairs.

Click Here for Software Details Click Here to Request Private Demo

Gen2 Systems Limited

W: www.gen2systems.net

T: +44 (0) 121 351 6563 E: adrian.ryan@gen2systems.net

Company formed: 2007, Office Location: Birmingham UK, London UK Name of Product Marketed • FLYdocs Number of Modules.........9 Five Key Business/Software Areas • Aircraft Management • Engine Centre • Repair Centre • Search • Current Status / EoL Centre FLYdocs is a highly efficient system used for electronic Document Storage, Aircraft Returns, Engine Management, Repair Management, Landing Gear Management, APU Management, Thrust Reverser Management, instant online Searching and Lease Company Management….plus much more…

The system is incredibly flexible and easy to use and provides clients with integrated options to connect to internal Maintenance Planning systems to create a closed loop for record keeping. FLYdocs uses a highly advanced and exceptionally intelligent platform to perform manual tasks with ease, vastly reducing the time it takes to manage documentation as well as providing major cost savings and value for money.

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Hexaware Technologies

W: www.hexaware.com/travel-transport-hospitality-solution.htm T: India: +91 22-67919595 T: Americas: +1 609-409-6950 E: vaibhavs@hexaware.com Company formed: 1990, Office Location: Mumbai, New Jersey, London, Frankfurt, Singapore, Japan, Dubai, Mexico

Name of Product Marketed • Hexaware is a Technology and Business Services Company providing end to end services to the Aviation market.

Number of Modules.........n/a Five Key Business/Software Areas • Custom MRO Software development and maintenance • System selection consulting & system integration services • Implementation, upgrades and migration of MRO products • Interface Development • Customization and Enhancement across modules Hexaware is a niche, focused IT and BPO services company providing end-to-end system integration and IT services to customers across Travel & Transportation, Banking and Financial Services, Healthcare and Manufacturing industries. With annual revenues of USD 230M for FY 2010, Hexaware has a global workforce of around 6300 consultants working across various industries and technologies. Hexaware has a strong experience working in various business functions in MRO and Technical Documentation domains and specialize in System selection, custom software development and maintenance services, Business Intelligence / analytics, Infrastructure Management Services (IMS), and Quality Assurance and Testing services.

Click here for company product details Click Here to Request Private Demo

HOLOCENTRIC

W: www.holocentric.com T: +1 612 9957 3169 E: info@holocentric.com

Company formed: 2003. Office Location: Sydney, Canberra, Hong Kong Name of Product Marketed • Modeler, Modelpedia Five Key Business/Software Areas • MRO and Major Systems Implementations • Organizational Transformation • Continuous Improvement • Compliance Improvement • Business Management Systems Holocentric provides software and services for Airlines to build Operational Frameworks and Business Management Systems to support the business. This includes successfully completing the Transformation Programs, including implementing the MRO software, training material and publishing of the portal for Business, including both legacy and new applications.

We do this by creating an OPERATIONAL FRAMEWORK AND PORTAL, useable by all personnel. Holocentric customers’ MRO projects are successfully completed within budge t. Importantly, compmpliance is increased acrossthe organisation as a result.

Click Here for Software/Product Details Click Here to Request Private Demo

SUMMER 2012 | AIRCRAFT IT MRO | SOFTWARE DIRECTORY | 45

IDMR Solutions Inc.

W: www.IDMR-Solutions.com T: +1-347-565-4367 E: sales@IDMR-Solutions.com

Company formed: 1998 Office Location: New York/Tel Aviv Name of Product Marketed • InForm Number of Modules.........20+ Five Key Business/Software Areas • Technical Publication • Engineering Orders • Task Cards • Planning • Maintenance Programs IDMR is a global provider of easy to use and all encompassing Technical Documentation Management Solutions which have been designed exclusively for Fleet operators, MRO providers and OEM organizations. IDMR’s Technical Documentation Management Solutions have proven success in increasing operational performance and decreasing operational cost while ensuring airworthiness, safety and regulatory compliance.

Click Here for Software/Product Details Click Here to Request Private Demo

InfoTrust Group, Inc.

W: www.infotrustgroup.com T: +1 949-732-7532 E: loster@infotrustgroup.com

Company formed: 1994, Office Location: Irvine, CA, Boulder, CO, Phoenix, AZ, Austin, TX, Shanghai, China, Paris France Name of Product Marketed • TechSight/X S1000D, TechSight/X ATA Number of Modules.........10+ Five Key Business/Software Areas • Content Management System (CMS) • Interactive Electronic Technical Publisher (IETP) • Technical Operations Edition • Technical Publications Edition • Flight Operations Edition A recognized leader in the aerospace industry for more than 25 years, InfoTrust delivers solutions to hundreds of companies for their information processing, conversion, authoring, content and change management, publishing and distribution objectives. InfoTrust’s wide range of end-to-end solutions increase productivity by taking advantage of XML capabilities and content reuse, and that produce more accurate and reliabile information for compliancy. Its solutions support all flight ops, engineering, maintenance, engine, component and training manuals. InfoTrust currently services major airlines, OEMs, suppliers and MRO s worldwide. To learn more about TechSight/X and InfoTrust Group’s full range of products, services and solutions, please visit www.infotrustgroup.com.

Click here for software details Click here to request private demo

Omega Airine Software, Inc.

W: www.omegaair.com T: +1-972-775-3693 E: info@omegaair.com

Company formed: 1991. Office Location: Midlothian, TX Name of Product Marketed • Ames Advanced Planning and Scheduling System Number of Modules.........5 Five Key Business/Software Areas • Optimized long range planning • Short-term scheduling • Line/RON scheduling • Engine and component scheduling • Business intellegence Omega Airline Software has been supplying the aviation industry with Ames, the industry standard Advanced Planning and Scheduling software tool, since 1991. Ames currently enables the optimized planning of maintenance on over 4000 aircraft at 21 customer sites around the world. Unique in the industry, no other tool provides the planning power or information creation of Ames. Companies enjoying the benefits of Ames include mainline commercial operators, regional airlines, fractional ownership companies and MRO operations. Amesfive, the current release, combines the power of Ames with the versatility and access of the Web.

Click Here for Software/Product Details Click Here to Request Private Demo

PSIPENTA Software Systems GmbH.

W: www.psipenta.com T: +49 (0)800 377 4968 E: info@psipenta.com

Company formed: 1997. Office Location: Germany (Berlin, Stuttgart, München, Essen) Name of Product Marketed • PSIpenta Project Management; PSIpenta Materials Management; PSIpenta Maintenance, PSIpenta Purchasing, PSIpenta Order Management, Psipenta Sequencing, PSIpenta Warehouse Management, PSIpenta Adaptive Planning, PSIpenta Mobile Processes, PSIpenta Data Collection, PSIpenta Control System, PSIpenta Finite Capacity Scheduling, PSIpenta Cost Accounting Number of Modules.........15 Five Key Business/Software Areas • MRO • Materials Management • Planning & Scheduling • Production & Planning • Mobile Solutions PSIPENTA Software Systems GmbH offers a complete solution for managing and maintaining complex technical systems. Our philosophy of Perfection in Aerospace is reflected in all aspects of our software.

Successful customer connections give a reference for our highly customer-oriented software solutions.

PSIpenta suite supports the planning and control of maintenance and servicing processes. The scope covers the whole MRO process ranging from slot planning to mobile processes.

PSIpenta Planning, Execution & Control refers to a solution-oriented approach based on standardized software modules. It enables the optimization of value-adding processes and increases logistic planning in existing system landscapes with commercial focus.

Click Here for Software/Product Details Click Here to Request Private Demo

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