Tracking down maintenance tracking software

AUGUST 2008
Technology Focus
Tracking Down
Maintenance Tracking
Software
BY CHARLOTTE ADAMS
It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to find a good maintenance tracking software,
just some good research. Here we have done the sleuthing for you and have
looked at a variety of levels of software ranging from airline-worthy to small
shop ready to software designed for individual maintenance departments.
M
aintenance tracking software
programs are as varied as the
industry they serve. Products
run from shrink-wrapped packages
loaded onto a single personal computer,
to Web-based services which process
transactions remotely, to enterprise
software that runs on an organization’s
internal networks. There is something
for everyone in commercial and corporate aviation, and one’s choices will
depend on the size and experience of
the maintenance department, the number and type of aircraft in the fleet it
services, the level of support it requires,
and the price it can afford.
At the high end, the airlines use
industrial-strength maintenance tracking software they have evolved over the
decades or products from vendors such
as TRAX Corp. or Mxi Technologies.
These typically have multiple, interconnected modules besides tracking — such
as materials management, workflow
and reporting — which can be bought
piece by piece or as a bundled package.
According to Chris Reed, TRAX managing director, TRAX and Mxi offer similar
products: “They cover fewer functional
areas but go deeper in some of them,”
he claims. “We [TRAX] cover every
function IT [information technology]
requires,” he asserts. TRAX’s software
is connected to an airline’s corporate
finance system, so that TRAX can share
data such as the verification of invoices;
it is connected to flight operations software so that updates of flight schedules
and information on aircraft in and out
of service can be communicated back
and forth. TRAX sells its functions as
a bundle, not one by one. The software
runs on an Oracle database.
Mxi, on the other hand, lets customers choose which functions to pay
for. Its Maintenix software is comparable to an enterprise resource management program (ERP) in its breadth
and power, says CEO Doug Brouse,
although the program focuses on maintenance, rather than trying to fill all an
airline’s IT needs. Customers include
Qantas, Air Canada, KLM/AirFrance
and China Airlines, as well as NetJets.
Like TRAX, Mxi stresses the compatibility of its modules with other software.
The company has “invested heavily in
making [the software] integratable,”
Brouse says. “In our view maintenance
really can’t be an island. You really need
to have your maintenance tied into all
your other information systems.”
Mxi started out with the maintenance engineering module, the heart
of its system, and then built out to
line maintenance, shop maintenance,
heavy maintenance, material management and other segments. Because the
pieces are internally integrated, people
working in the supply area can anticipate the demand for a part and have
it available when it is needed. The
Doug Brouse, CEO Mxi
system automates the routine work of
assigning tasks to maintenance facilities, Brouse says, so that time can be
focused on exception management, fixing problems such as missing parts or
insufficient capacity.
The Mxi system models components
in its database and associates maintenance tasks against them. Basically,
after the maintenance program and the
parts are entered into the database,
wherever the parts go, the maintenance
program follows, flagging any task that
may be overdue.
TRAX customers buy the complete
product with all of its 23 modules,
including an engineering segment for
maintenance tracking, which basically
generates job cards and monitors all of
the regulatory requirements.
Almost 80 airlines use the TRAX
software, Reed says, and about 40 percent of the company’s business is in
the United States, with carriers such as
United. More than 2,600 airplanes, most
of them jets, are supported. Lufthansa
Technik, the largest TRAX user, has
3,000 technicians on TRAX at its maintenance base in the Philippines. The
client/server software, which can cost
a big airline “several million” dollars, is
supported for a fee that ranges from 18
percent to 21 percent of the purchase
cost, Reed says. It can take from six
months to a year and a half to set up
the program, depending on the size of
the airline, a timescale similar to Mxi’s.
Although the software has always been
Web-enabled, it is not yet Web-based.
But a Web-based version, now in beta
test, is expected soon.
Role-Based Logons
Mxi’s software is already Web-based,
says Brouse, and features a role-based
browser. So when a worker logs on,
in the quality assurance (QA), mainte-
nance technician or the maintenance
planner role, for example, the software
provides an appropriate list of tasks to
do that day. Most customers host the
software internally.
Maintenance tracking software is a
good idea for even the most cost-conscious carrier, TRAX maintains. “To cut
costs, you have to know where you’re
spending the money,” Reed says. One
of the airlines’ biggest costs, he asserts,
is maintaining older applications. One
customer, who was spending $1 million a year in this way, replaced its old
solution — software and hardware —
with TRAX for less than that, he says.
Lufthansa Technik’s Philippine facility
cut IT costs by 30 percent, when it went
from 17 different tracking systems to
his company’s product, he adds.
Mxi touts its money-saving track record
as well. Executive Jet Management, a
company owned by NetJets, achieved a
63 percent productivity increase in its
fleet management group via the software, Brouse says. The U.S. Navy, which
uses Mxi software to determine when
parts on the F/A-18’s F414 engines need
to be changed — a process that involves
tracking more than 1,400 parameters
— has obtained 30 percent more usable
life out of engine components, he says.
Similarly, Naval Flight Training Canada,
which uses the software for line maintenance in a completely wireless environment, has registered a 7 percent
increase in aircraft availability and
has reduced turn times to 12 minutes,
Brouse asserts.
TRAX’s Windows-based software also
provides role-based logons, so that a
maintenance planner, purchaser and
engineer will see different data and
different views. The maintenance engineer, for example, will open a page that
depicts urgent problems or changes to
procedures. At the click of a mouse,
he can view the fleet, with the aircraft
color-coded according to status.
TRAX claims to be the only maintenance tracking software vendor thus
far to have offered an implementation of the ATA Chapter 11 electronic
format for reliability data that has
been tested with all the manufacturers.
The standard is intended to speed the
flow of reliability information from the
manufacturers to the airlines. TRAX
also provides digital signature capability and biometric signoffs based on
fingerprints. The biometric can be used
to log into applications, ask for spare
parts, and to issue and sign job cards,
2 Aviation Maintenance | www.avtoday.com/am | August 2008
Reed says. It actually can reduce IT
costs, since, unlike a password, it can’t
be changed. One customer saved two
full-time jobs by using the biometric
technology, applying the IT expertise
elsewhere in the enterprise.
Business Aviation
Corporate maintenance departments
can choose from a range of software
options and business models. The giant
in this market is CAMP Systems, which,
along with competitors such as Avtrak,
employs a subscription-based business
model. Users log into a browser interface and their transactions are processed — over the Internet — at the
vendor’s or an outsourced data center.
Now in its 40th year of operation,
CAMP services more than 5,800 airplanes, according to CEO Ken Gray. The
company’s maintenance tracking service,
he says, is the factory-endorsed program for Dassault aircraft; Bombardier
Challengers, LearJets and Global Express
aircraft; Hawker Beechcraft Hawkers,
King Airs, BJ400s and H4000s; and Pilatus
and Piaggio aircraft. Fractional operators such as Flight Options and Exojet
also use CAMP’s product. Bombardier,
Dassault and Hawker Beechcraft models
come with a year of CAMP free, and the
company enjoys a 99 percent renewal
rate, he says.
“The reason we are the endorsed
company is because the people at the
OEMs [original equipment manufacturers] want quality data flowing back
to them,” Gray says. CAMP works very
closely with the OEMs to provide aggregated data for performance and reliability analysis. CAMP can tell them,
for example, what the top 10 unscheduled removals are on a certain model
of aircraft, or that a landing gear that is
supposed to be good for 1,000 or more
cycles is only lasting 800 cycles.
CAMP’s solution supports about 140
different makes and models. These
range from a Pilatus to a BBJ in size,
but 70 percent of the customers are
single aircraft operators. About 20 percent of the fleet is foreign-operated. The
company owns its own data center and
converted from a mainframe to a Webbased system in 2001.
Subscriptions range from $3,000 to
$12,000 per aircraft per year, averaging
about $7,000, Gray says. CAMP subscriptions are typically 20 percent to 25
percent higher than Avtrak’s, he adds.
But people buy maintenance tracking
based on quality rather than price,
Full Service
The U.S. Navy, which uses Mxi software to determine when parts on the F/A-18’s F414 engines need to be
changed, has obtained 30 percent more usable life out of engine components, according to Mxi.
he maintains. Moreover, “Whatever
you spend on maintenance tracking
is insignificant, compared to either
doing maintenance you don’t need to
do or missing maintenance that you do
need to do.” Gray asserts that the average business aircraft consumes around
$300,000 in maintenance per year. You
don’t spend that kind of money, “if
you’re not willing to spend $7,000 to
$8,000 to make sure you’re doing the
right stuff.” Maintenance tracking is a
very small item in the budget of a corporate aircraft, he asserts. But if you’re
out of compliance, you can’t fly.
Competitor Avtrak provides Webbased services similar to CAMP’s, but
there are differences. Avtrak offers tiered
services, so that a maintenance department can choose a solution involving
less analyst support. The typical customer is a corporate flight department
with five to 10 airplanes, according
to Dennis Steinbeck, vice president of
sales and marketing.
Like CAMP, Avtrak supports about
140 makes and models. “We subscribe to
the technical publications and we keep
the master data set,” ranging from the
type certificate to service bulletins and
airworthiness directives, Steinbeck says.
The data also includes the life of components and scheduled inspection programs. So, when an aircraft manufacturer revises its maintenance program,
Avtrak makes the change available to its
customers. The system is “approved or
accepted by almost all of the majors,”
he says. Avtrak also shares data with
the OEMs for their reliability analysis
and customer support, and in return
receives the technical publications necessary to keep its databases current.
Tiered Service
Avtrak’s technical specialists also can
provide “quality oversight,” such as
checking logbook entries to make sure
they properly document the work that
was done. Mistakes range from mistyping a serial number to incorrectly signing
off on work. Not all customers, however,
need this additional oversight, Steinbeck
says. For the more self-sufficient Avtrak
provides a “lite” level of service, which
involves such things as updating the
maintenance program information as it
is revised by the manufacturer. With the
“standard” level of service, a customer
gets a particular analyst assigned to an
aircraft. The analyst helps the customer
doing an update in the field or updates
the aircraft’s data from information
faxed in by the customer.
Although Avtrak did not reveal its
pricing, its Web site states that this is
“often 30+ percent less than competing systems.” Its tiered service model
and volume discounts, moreover, allow
customers to reap additional savings.
Avantair Inc., a Florida-based fractional provider that uses the lite level of
service, says it pays an annual enrollment fee of just $1,200 per aircraft. The
company manages a fleet of 49 Piaggio
Avanti P.180 aircraft and its 82-personstrong maintenance operation performs
its own QA and inputs its own data.
Much bigger than Avtrak, CAMP
employs 287 people and offers an aircraft-to-analyst ratio of 48 to one, Gray
says. He describes CAMP as a “fullservice” business, offering a single level
of service. “The market prefers a fair
price for premium service,” he states.
“Maintenance tracking isn’t software,”
he asserts. “Software is maybe 20 percent of the equation…maintenance
tracking is the management of templates, publications, the management of
the QC [quality control] process.” QC,
he explains, is ensuring that the data
used to create the maintenance tracking
information is correct.
A subscription for CAMP’s maintenance tracking service includes electronic logbook and work center functions. The work center software helps
a maintenance department to assemble
tasks in a logical work path. CAMP
also provides document storage and
retention. So, when somebody signs off
on the work, the logbook entry can be
faxed to CAMP at a toll-free number,
where it is electronically stored and
archived. Customers can input their
own data, but most prefer to let CAMP
do it because it’s entered and checked
in 24 to 48 hours.
Analysts can look at how many hours
a customer flies and supply a due list,
with items coming up for inspection or
work. The CAMP system provides the
current pages of the aircraft manual
to do the work, with illustrations and
text. Once CAMP receives the signoff
for the work, its analysts examine the
paperwork to ensure, for example, that
allowable parts were used.
Customer personnel can specify what
they want to see on the interface when
they log on. A fleet manager, for example, would probably use what CAMP
calls the “heads-up display,” which
includes red, yellow and green lights
to indicate overdue items, due items,
and good-to-go, respectively. A King
Air operator with one aircraft, however,
might use the “express interface,” which
can display a downloadable due list.
Avtrak claims to have an easier-touse, cleaner interface than CAMP’s
because Avtrak’s was designed from
the start to be Web-based. Avtrak says
its system is used to track between
3,500 and 4,000 airplanes. Some 1,562
of the aircraft, however, are supported
by Gulfstream, which licenses Avtrak’s
technology and infrastructure to power
the OEM’s CMP.net solution. This group
Aviation Maintenance | www.avtoday.com/am | August 2008 3
of aircraft, which Gulfstream says constitutes approximately 97 percent of
the manufacturer’s in-service fleet, is
served by about 40 Gulfstream employees, according to Steinbeck. Among
Avtrak’s direct customers are Sentient,
a large charter operator, Wal-Mart and
fractional provider, Avantair.
Other differences between Avtrak and
CAMP are that Avtrak outsources data
processing and develops its software
in partnership with another company,
which devotes six employees to the task.
Avtrak, itself, employs about 40 people,
some 30 of whom are A&Ps and many
of whom have inspection authorization,
Steinbeck says.
Avtrak follows 750 to 1,000 line items
per aircraft. Maintenance inspection
programs are quite involved, he stresses.
“It’s not like changing the oil in your
engine every 3,000 hours.” Items can be
tracked by hours, calendar or landings/
cycles. Some inspections may be either/
or—every 300 hours or 12 months,
whichever comes first. Others may have
a tolerance or window around them. And
how you calculate the next due time is
not always straightforward. While maintenance tracking is the software’s core
function, work order and inventory control functions are available as options.
The enrollment process is straightforward. When Avtrak gets an in-service aircraft with, for example, 5,000 hours, the
company prefers to enter the data from
the aircraft’s physical logbook, Steinbeck
says. But a customer can send Avtrak a
status report from another maintenance
tracking system and have Avtrak enter
this detailed listing of inspections.
When a customer logs on, the first
screen is a list of the airplanes in the customer’s fleet. This “dashboard,” summary view is color-coded — green, yellow,
red — to indicate the compliance status
of each aircraft. From there the user can
drill down into the system to find out,
for example, what is causing a red light.
The customer can also enable email
alerts and can log in from Blackberries
or other PDAs.
Shrink-Wrapped
Both Aircraft Technical Publishers
(ATP) and Conklin & de Decker offer
shrink-wrapped maintenance tracking
software. ATP’s Microsoft-based product,
Maintenance Director, which stores aircraft data in a Sybase database, also can
be networked. ATP’s software is not Webbased and can run on as low as an Intel
386 with 512 Mbytes of memory.
ATP’s basic package, Maintenance
Director Planner, costs $1,500 in a standalone configuration. It keeps track of
the last work that was done, so that
the user can forecast what needs to be
done next. The midlevel version of the
software, Maintenance Director E-Log,
and the high-end Maintenance Director
Enterprise cost $3,500 and $4,500,
respectively, in the standalone mode.
Regardless of the version used, the
price rises by $2,500 for each additional
increment of five users. The E-Log version features an electronic logbook that
“remembers all you’ve done,” says product specialist Bob Jones. The Enterprise
version adds more queries and tools, as
well as reporting options.
ATP’s largest customer by fleet size
is the Columbian Air Force, with about
300 planes, Jones says. But the typical
customer is a corporate operator with
two or more aircraft. Most customer aircraft are fixed-wing, either turboprops
or jets, ranging from Lears and Falcons
to King Airs and Twin Commanders.
ATP has templates for about 40 models
of aircraft.
The ATP system basically tracks the
requirements against a piece of equipment. The software is so flexible that
some customers have used it to track
aircraft tugs, torque wrenches, and even
employee training records. The program
also offers more depth in parts tracking
than competitors, Jones asserts. One
aircraft manufacturer uses ATP to track
components on different configurations
of test bed aircraft, he says.
Conklin & de Decker’s MxManager
software is a solution that is inclusive
enough to service the “smaller folks and
orphans out there in the world,” as well as
the more conventional business aircraft,
according to senior analyst H.B. Wise.
This includes the underserved helicopter
market and “aircraft that the manufacturer is not so interested in tracking anymore because maybe the numbers aren’t
there.” Users range from maintenance
departments with two people to those
with double shifts of 20 people.
The software can be installed on a
single computer or a network and is
designed to be flexible in tracking components, Wise says. “You don’t have to try
to shoehorn a helicopter into fixed-wing
software by calling your engine cycles
landings, or something like that.” The
company has templates for about 120
makes and models. “We try to give users
as much control as possible over what
their aircraft look like and how they are
being tracked,” he says.
The software includes three modules,
covering maintenance tracking, inventory and work orders. Users can buy all
three segments together, or inventory
and work order together, or tracking only,
Wise says. The complete package costs
$8,500 and there is a $2,000/year service
fee, which includes twice yearly software
updates. For a small fee, Conklin & de
Decker people will input aircraft data for
a customer, but it’s the customer’s responsibility to make sure it’s all correct.
The company has about 50 MxManager
customers with 300 to 350 aircraft, divided “pretty evenly” between fixed-wing,
mixed fleets and rotary-wing fleets. In
total numbers of aircraft, one-half to
two-thirds are rotary-wing. Most of the
customers have at least two aircraft and
around half of them are state or local
agencies. Conklin & de Decker even has
one federal customer, the U.S. Marshals
Service. Among the rotary-wing users are
tour operators, corporate operators, fire
departments, police agencies and sheriffs departments. Not all of the aircraft
are of the older or underserved variety.
Airsprint, a fractional in Canada, operates
a fleet of about 20 newer aircraft. Conklin
& de Decker’s customers are located as
far away as Australia, New Zealand, New
Guinea, Canada and Mexico.
The software is easy to use, and
Wise says he has trained people just
out of high school with no computer
experience. The complete maintenance
tracking package can generate about
100 reports, derived from about 25 base
reports. A user can create a report on
every component on every aircraft, for
example, or an “alerted items report”
with every bulletin, maintenance item
or component on an aircraft or multiple
aircraft within the alert parameters.
Contact Information
TRAX
www.trax.aero
877-264-8729
305-662-7400
+44 1403-275-353
Avtrak
www.avtrak.com
303-745-5588
Mxi
www.mxi.com
613-747-4698
Aircraft Technical
Publishers (ATP)
www.atp.com
800-227-4610
415-330-9500
CAMP Systems
www.campsys.com
877-411-2267
631-588-3200
Conklin & de
Decker
www.conklindd.com
817-277-6403
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