Software to manage aircraft maintenance is invaluable to airlines, as Bernie Baldwin discovers from two leading players in the sector.
An operational aircraft does not make money when it’s on the ground. Whether it is going through scheduled maintenance or suffering an unscheduled grounding, getting any aircraft back into the air as quickly as possible is the goal for any airline and its MRO operation.
To achieve that objective effectively means managing the maintenance process to its optimum. And to do that, a variety of IT applications are employed which not only function in the hangar, but now extend to work performed on the ramp. As with anything involving IT, application updates and enrichments arrive on a rolling basis.
The events from the first quarter of 2020 until now, have obviously made life difficult for just about every business. Against that backdrop, however, enhancements to products continued to be implemented, as Magni Arge, chairman of Lundin Software, reports.
“We utilised the relatively ‘silent’ period of aviation as an opportunity to speed up the work to finalise a third version of our Gannet system,” he explains. “Gannet 3 was released in January 2022, probably a year earlier than may have happened under ‘normal’ circumstances. It followed the first and second versions, published in 2008 and 2015 respectively. And I think we can proudly say that the third version provides the users with a very modern and competitive aviation maintenance management system.”
According to Arge, Gannet 3’s improved performance stems from a changed architecture within the application, upgrading to the latest version of .NET 6, and implementation of a new data grid which can quickly display large amounts of data.
“We’ve also added asynchronous operations, which means that when a long operation runs, the program is still fully responsive. The user can go to other pages while the long operation is running and come back when it is finished to see the results,” he elaborates. “Additionally, we’ve removed the limitation to edit only one item at a time, and redesigned workflows based on 15 years of accumulated experience and user feedback. The changed workflows are more suitable for increased digitalisation and digital signatures.”
All this makes it easier to correct or implement new flows in the application, reducing the time needed to start adding changes of any size to the flows in the system. For example, when a user makes a change, all other affected pages now automatically refresh, rather than requiring a manual refresh.
“Gannet 3 is also more touch friendly for use on tablets, giving the user the possibility to run the full application from a tablet or computer with a touchscreen. It can use the computer camera to read bar codes, such as when taking parts from stock and also to use the camera to capture pictures and store as digital information,” Arge adds.
Ontario, Canada-based WinAir has also been enhancing its MRO package, according to the company’s commercial manager, Jane Clayburn. She begins the major advances in the acceptance of digital record keeping across regulatory authorities. “[This provides] the ability to quickly search and locate information, resulting in efficient parts room-to-hangar-floor movement. Additionally, the time wasted searching for a paper record that may have been misfiled or realising that a part isn’t on hand for an upcoming reoccurring maintenance task, is greatly minimised by having a maintenance software solution,” she explains.
“Supply chains have been greatly impacted over the last 12 months, and users need robust tools to help manage their inventory. Enhancements to the tracking and visibility of pricing for individual parts from specific vendors have been critical in assisting procurement teams manage their costs and ensure they are leveraging information available from previous purchases,” Clayburn continues. “WinAir has developed dynamic pricing tools and the ability to compile information from previous RFQs (requests for quotes) to maximise the purchasing power of their operation.”
Greater digitalisation of these maintenance software packages is increasingly being introduced. Clayburn provides on how much is being used in the WinAir application and in what ways. First up is the WinAir Reliability module.
“This can perform trend analyses to identify outliers in part failures. Through trend analysis, WinAir can assist in determining whether the reoccurring failure is caused by an inherent part defect, weakness, or due to internal maintenance processes,” the commercial manager indicates. “This data can be pulled from any task to help determine the appropriate corrective actions, whether it be improving internal training, install processes, or finding a new vendor/manufacturer of the part.
“WinAir Inventory can be set up to relieve much of the re-ordering headaches for parts and services. Having greater visibility for parts on hand, integrating required parts workflow and advanced queue-based work, allows maintenance to continue with minimal delays. Parts continuously required or that have associated expiry dates can be set up for automatic re-order or recertification,” Clayburn remarks.
Meanwhile, digital record-keeping and full digital sign-offs are being utilised for increased compliance, efficiency and searchability. This is down to the majority of aviation authorities worldwide adopting acceptance of digital signatures to provide greater security of aircraft documentation.
“WinAir can facilitate a fully digital user experience through steps like multi-factor authentication and permissions levels for staff, allowing only qualified personnel to complete sign-offs on work orders and tasks. Employee training requirements can also be fully tracked in WinAir with the ability to forecast when their required training is due for renewal. Data is redundantly backed up on secure cloud-based servers, avoiding the risk of valuable paper records being destroyed,” Clayburn adds.
In increasing the digitalisation of Gannet 3, Lundin is working with KeepFlying, to develop proprietary aircraft and engine specific data models using machine learning (ML) to help asset owners, lessors, banks and MROs to convert their data to dollar insights. For MROs, an artificial intelligence (AI) driven, capacity balancing framework will support minimising TAT (turnaround times), forecasting costs and risks using ‘what-if’ simulations built against ageing and workscope models.
“Gannet will act as the source system on top of which the data is ‘wrangled’ using advanced AI techniques [including smart OCR, text semantics configured at an asset type level] prior to processing the use cases,” Arge notes.
Not every desirable function has yet been incorporated into Gannet, but Arge says the company proactively encourages two-way discussions with customers and partners about their specific needs and how they can be met while still keeping Gannet sharp, speedy and easy to work with.
“In some cases it makes sense to rewrite the playbook, sometimes it makes sense to introduce a new module, but we also consider interfaces to products from other vendors,” the chairman comments. “We believe in radical re-thinking of old processes and making it possible for the customers to get full benefit of recent technological advances. This means moving away from seeing our application as an isolated system, but more as a tool which can help reduce data duplication and help the customer to a more lean and efficient operation.”
Lundin and WinAir have strong competition with many companies and their applications. In fact, there always seems to be a considerable number of maintenance software companies, even when acquisitions appear to reduce the number, others crop up. Nevertheless, Arge expects further consolidation in this area.
“Some of this will come naturally when companies are slow in adapting to new technology or smarter ways of supporting maintenance management. But new trends will also open for new entrants which will constantly challenge the existing players,” the Lundin chairman asserts.
“Companies which have a solid system on the shelf and a modern approach to reinvent and modernise their platform are in a good position to survive either as a standalone or in a merged platform, while older systems with little development will lose ground. A good example of this is Lundin’s recent acquisition of AMICOS,” Arge declares.
WinAir’s Clayburn agrees that the maintenance software sector sees new players quite regularly and assesses what is behind that and whether the industry benefits in terms of keeping competition lively. “Maintenance software, on the surface, appears to be simple as best practices and maintenance workflows are similar. Dig deeper and you’ll find many complex nuances that new software companies fail to address,” she argues.
“With more than 30 years of experience built into WinAir, we’ve been able to address the requirements of aviation operators worldwide. It is not uncommon to have differing regulations from regional authorities, manufacturers, organisational procedures, and user practices. Each organisation tends to utilise a software package in a slightly different capacity, which makes satisfying the end-user a challenging job. Actively collaborating with the customer is the key to keeping positive long-term relationships that fosters growth and advances development,” Clayburn elucidates.
The WinAir executive’s summary of the market exemplifies how players in this sector should expect to feel about competition and belief in their own product.
“New maintenance software encourages innovation within the industry, forcing legacy systems to either evolve or become irrelevant. At WinAir, we are consistently adding new, innovative features to stay in step with the evolution of aviation maintenance. Ease of use, customer support, and effective training resources are all keys to remaining competitive in the aviation maintenance software market,” Clayburn concludes.
Author: Bernie Baldwin
Published 12th January 2023
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