The Uptime blog

Recently, I was drawn into a debate regarding the future of offline applications. (For my purpose, an offline application is one that continues to operate properly even when disconnected from the network.) The person I was debating took the position that offline applications will vanish within two years as Web-based and SaaS applications grow in popularity. Furthermore, they contended that current/real-time data is the only data of any real import to business. As a result, this person claimed that offline capabilities for software applications were truly unecessary. I disagree and firmly believe that offline applications will actually flourish in the future. Using the maintenance environment as a background, I will explain why:

1. Connectivity is not pervasive. No matter how much the wireless and cable companies want us to believe that the world will be fully-connected in the not-too-distant future, a large portion of the world will remain disconnected. Whether the connection is wireless or wired, access to the network is dependent on the number of customers that will pay for it. (Anyone that has driven through a rural/remote area can tell you how unreliable the cell-phone connection can be.) Furthermore, when it comes to fixing equipment, mechanics must often work in poor conditions where network cables are unavailable and wireless is slow and/or nonexistent. (Think about weather-related outages; isn’t it funny how often networks fail at the worst time possible?) Failover is critical to customer support and so having a disconnected-mode is key to delivering services in the real world.

2. Offline processing, online storage. In all things, performance is critical and offline processing leverages the power of the workstation, providing faster results. (This is especially true when problems and solutions are unclear, requiring multiple iterations to properly identify and resolve.) Once complete, results can be uploaded/synchronized to online repositories for use by other users.

3. Backup and archiving. In any regulated industry, companies often choose to save older versions of maintenance information, which provides a snapshot to a point in time. In the case of a recall or investigation, the ability to restore or view maintenance history is invaluable.

4. Intellectual property. Offline applications allow local storage of proprietary information that must always be at hand. This is critical for collecting maintenance notes and best-practices, where user-generated content can only be understood within the context of the specific equipment configuration and service procedures that were being performed. This is also important for field engineers that service multiple clients and must guard proprietary data from exposure.

5. Connectivity costs. Unless information changes daily (hourly?) it doesn’t make sense to make online access exclusive. Given the volume of data required to service complex equipment, local/offline applications make perfect sense.
 
Enigma is not the only company to recognize the importance of offline applications. I see a trend of classic web applications developing frameworks that enable them to work in offline mode and combine desktop and internet functionality: 

1. Google Gears
2. Adobe Air
3. Ebay (Perhaps the biggest web application ever, Ebay developed a desktop/offline application for power users.)
4. Wikipedia offers DVD and offline downloading.

The issue can be further highlighted using this simple metaphor; in a world that has reliable public transportation systems, people still use cars. A sense of security and predictability are what influence companies to retain control over maintenance data through the use of offline applications. The pendulum has shifted many times from the days of mainframe computing to desktop applications, to client (fat) and server applications, and back to the web and back again. Offline and online applications have survived the test of time, each for different reasons. It appears there will always be room for both.

We all know it’s been a difficult year for commercial aviation. Given that oil is $115 per barrel and, in an atmosphere of mergers, acquisitions, and a weak dollar, many airlines have reduced their fleets, laid off employees, imposed baggage fees and taken other measures to stem revenue loss.

A recent blog post on Airline World regarding the state of the industry is positive that the sky is falling (pun intended). Its headline shouts, “Oil Crisis in the Airline Industry!” and the text of the blog highlights just about every piece of bad news that the writer could muster for his argument—specifically highlighting the massive job cuts and fleet groundings in North America. That headline may be a great way to draw attention but it seems a bit disingenuous to educated readers.

In contrast, the August 28 issue of the Aviation News e-newsletter (sorry, it’s not on the Web so I can’t link to it) shared a rather upbeat perspective regarding the aircraft manufacturing industry. The article cites a report by the International Bureau of Aviation, a UK-based consulting firm. According to Aviation News, IBA has concluded that “the aviation market is cyclical and despite downturns and external pressures, is resilient and should continue to grow albeit at a slower rate.”

The Aviation News article includes a complete list of reasons for optimism, but here are a few of the big factors:
• Today’s cycle is different as the order book is not heavily relying on the US operators, and demand for commercial aircraft is becoming more diverse geographically.
• Manufacturers, industry associations and other bodies are consistently forecasting a growth in the aviation market of between five and six per cent in the medium-term.
• Record new aircraft orders were placed by the airline industry between 2005 and 2007.
• The number of parked aircraft had stopped rising and is showing some signs of reducing.

From Enigma’s perspective, the future of the aviation market is murky but not bleak. There are two sides to commercial aviation, the manufacturers and the carriers. Evaluating each shows reasons for optimism as well as concern, but it seems clear that the sky is not falling.

Yes, there are severe economic challenges for the commercial aviation industry, particularly in North America and Europe. It’s also true that the cost of oil hurts all carriers, regardless of the geography they serve. However, the Asia-Pacific market continues to grow (albeit a bit slower). As for North America and Europe, once the economy adjusts to the new cost of transportation the demand for airline transport, whether for people or goods, is likely to rebound and grow rather than shrink.

Manufacturing Business Technology recently announced its MBT 2008 Innovation Insight Awards, and among them was an Honorable Mention for Advanced Technology Services (ATS), a company that provides maintenance and repair services for manufacturing plants.

ATS received the kudos because they deployed Knowledgebase—their own proprietary database of processes, procedures and best practices for their field service technicians. What is interesting is that much of the content in this custom application came from the technicians themselves. Knowledgebase helps ATS to fix equipment faster, thereby reducing their customers’ downtime.

Here at Enigma we agree wholeheartedly with capturing and reusing technical expertise, which is why our products such as InService MRO, InService EPC and the Enigma 3C Platform all include a feature called eNotes. (For a mini product demo of this feature, see our August 15 podcast post.) 

While service manuals may contain some previously established best practices or proprietary techniques, eNotes allow mechanics to insert new comments connected to the original content. This lets companies capture feedback on-the-fly and also gives context to the comments because they are linked to the specific task that was being performed. eNotes are also available to other users (based on authorization/distribution rules). This makes it easy for other mechanics to learn from their peers and for OEMs to update documentation so that it reflects real world experience.

But it’s not just eNotes that make Enigma products useful; our products aggregate and deliver all product content in one place, in ways that streamline the entire maintenance execution process. The ability for service technicians to use a single application to pull relevant OEM information, whether parts information or service manuals, from multiple sources, is a tremendous advantage in the field or the service depot. The description of ATS’ Knowledgebase is impressive, but it sounds like an expensive solution. What is more impressive is that, today, any company can provide similar capabilities using Enigma’s out-of-the-box solutions.

In this mini-demo of the InService Electronic Parts Catalog (EPC), Enigma Solution Specialist Rob Bannerman gives an overview of the eNote feature. 

The eNotes functionality enables parts managers and service technicians to collaborate by creating personal notes and comments within the InService EPC application. The user can create eNotes at several levels: on assemblies or individual parts for the full parts catalog, on individual parts in a specific parts catalog (by serial number), and on maintenance manuals, product specs, sales collateral, and other product information. These eNotes are then available for reference whenever the relevant application or maintenance information is displayed.  An eNote can be added publicly or privately, and users can also search under eNotes to find parts and assembly information.

Please click on the pop-up player to see this 2-minute demonstration.

 

 Podcast Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (90)

I thought of giving this blog post the title, “Yeah, what he said!” That’s how strongly I feel about the comments made by Scott Luckett at the 2008 Aftermarket eForum. Mr. Luckett is the vice president of Technology Standards and Solutions at the Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association, so he is probably well qualified to speak on the topic of electronic data and the automotive aftermarket. His premise is that the lack of accurate electronic data is increasing the cost of doing business. I agree.

The problem is that Mr. Luckett oversimplifies a number of issues. He wants all aftermarket automotive data to be electronic. But what does that mean, what format should it be in? Should it be PDF, XML, Word? He talks as if getting the data into an electronic format and following certain standards is the answer. It’s not that simple. For example, the aerospace industry has strict data standards but that has not helped them achieve the electronic nirvana that Mr. Luckett envisions. Even though every aerospace manufacturer adheres to the same standards, the data still doesn’t integrate well. The problem of data interoperability is even worse in the automotive industry where there are more OEMs, more suppliers and fewer standards. The vast number of brands and trim packages ensures that agreement on standards, and how to interpret them, is a long way off.

The key to interoperability is not the data, but the software that uses that data. Mr. Luckett properly points out that Services Oriented Architecture (SOA) is the key technology for reliable interoperability. This is especially true for electronic parts catalogs (EPC), the starting point for most parts and service activity. Because of the difficulty in establishing usable data standards, the Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association (AAIA) should spend its’ time advocating that OEMs move to electronic data using SOA. This would help OEMs realize the benefits that modern technology brings to the aftermarket, without waiting for standards to be finalized. Such a strategy would simplify the deployment of innovative solutions that improve part selection and increase first time fix rates (FTFR), which benefits the customer, the OEM and the dealer. Furthermore, such a strategy helps preserve one of the OEMs’ chief worries—protecting intellectual property.

I’m looking forward to my first visit to Budapest, Hungary, not only to sample the goulash but to attend the ATA e-Business Forum in October.  If your company has any responsibility for aircraft maintenance, it’s worth sending someone to this event. I’ve been focusing on aftermarket service and support technology for eight years, but last year was my first ATA e-biz show and I have to tell you, the people that attended impressed me. They knew their stuff and were very involved in the technical sessions. What I really liked was that they wouldn’t let the speakers give easy answers to hard questions.

Of course it wouldn’t be an aviation technology event without the inevitable hype regarding S1000D and how it’s changing the world. There were plenty of vendors trying to convince airlines, MROs and OEMs to buy their solution and get a jump on the competition in moving to the new standard. But in between all the hype, there were a lot of people talking about how to improve the use of information they already had, without S1000D. (For the record, Enigma is a strong supporter of S1000D but we think airlines, MROs and OEMs need solutions that work with legacy data as well.) These people understood that at the end of the day, even though the new standard holds a lot of promise, it will take years (decades?) to get all the relevant information converted. After all, we’re talking about Terabytes (Petabytes? Exabytes?) of information and in the meantime the airlines, MROs and OEMs have businesses to run.  

With that in mind, many of the people attending ATA e-biz were more interested in how to improve their business processes today…with the assurance of supporting S1000D tomorrow. These people wanted to accelerate job card processes, to ensure maintenance crews have the right information all the time, every time. They were looking for ways to improve non-routine job card processes, so that aircraft maintenance could stay on schedule, or ahead of schedule. They wanted to improve the efficiency and consistency of one of their largest workforces.

The people I met were realists who understood that, for their current fleets, it will be a long-long time before all the maintenance manuals, repair manuals, engine manuals, component manuals, illustrated parts catalogs, service bulletins, technical revisions, planning documents, equipment lists, schematics and other configuration information is converted to the new format (if ever). All the airline folks agreed that S1000D was gaining acceptance with the 787 and A380 (some, not all of the manuals will be S1000D) but that didn’t help them with the rest of their Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier, Embraer, ATR, Fokker, BAE, GE, Pratt & Whitney, Rolls-Royce, CFM, IAE and Honeywell fleets.

The best thing about ATA e-biz is that a lot of really good issues, that seem to be hidden but have far-reaching consequences, are brought under the microscope, inspected, discussed and in some cases resolved. What I learned from last year’s ATA e-biz was that it’s a bunch of smart people having honest discussions about applying technology to current maintenance issues and future business opportunities. I hope this year’s event is just as good.

In asset-intensive industries like oil & gas, energy & utilities, mining and transportation, capital equipment downtime can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per day. One of the primary challenges to keeping assets up and running is the daunting complexity and various configurations of the equipment: maintenance planners and service technicians must reference enormous volumes of documentation, some of which is spread across multiple locations; some in paper form, others in online databases.

Many companies in asset-intensive industries have made substantial investments in Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) systems or Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS). While these systems can have a wide range of capabilities, broadly speaking they try to improve maintenance planning by indicating what to do and when to do it. This often includes job scheduling and assignment, preventive maintenance (PM), inventory control, and other activities associated with asset availability, reliability and operational safety.

Largely beyond the scope of EAM/CMMS applications is direct support for how to perform maintenance activities—particularly unplanned maintenance activities—in the field. While some EAM systems can generate work orders, and perhaps material lists for various maintenance tasks, the primary purpose of these systems is to support the maintenance planner, not the mechanic.

That’s where Enigma’s technology comes into play, because it delivers the how to content as a fully integrated maintenance solution: fault isolation/troubleshooting manuals (how to diagnose), service manuals (how to repair), service bulletins (how to incorporate the latest procedures), parts catalogs (how to find the proper parts) and collaboration (how to share maintenance history/experience). Improving the efficiency of mechanics has a major impact on reducing asset downtime and thus on bottom-line profitability and competitiveness; it’s common sense to increase the value of EAM by integrating Enigma into the equation. In future blog posts we’ll provide specific examples that show companies how to further leverage EAM/CMMS investments.

A recent news clip on AviationWeek.com noted that KLM-Air France is in preliminary talks with French transportation company Veolia about a potential rail partnership.

What’s this about air and rail transit companies getting cozy with each other? They don’t usually share resources; they compete against each other, on short-haul trips at least. Ah, but trains and planes share one thing in common: they move people and goods.  This potential partnership may be a case of “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” mentality, which makes sense in a lot of ways, financially.

In some areas, particularly Europe and the northeastern U.S., high speed rail is providing stiff competition for airlines, especially for transporting people on short-haul routes.  When you factor in the time necessary to get to and from an airport and pass through the security checks, it is often faster—or just as fast—to go via high speed rail, if your destination is a short distance away (for example, Paris to Frankfurt). Furthermore, it costs about the same amount of money for the ticket holder/user, and the train stations are usually located in convenient downtown urban locations, near businesses and other transit infrastructure.  Veolia does not yet use high speed rail, but that could change, since the infrastructure is in place throughout much of Europe, and in some parts of the United States. (It’s worth noting that Veolia, though headquartered in France, is the largest transportation (bus and rail) provider in the US, and operates services on behalf of over 5,000 local, regional and national authorities around the globe.)

Rising fuel costs are no doubt a factor that is prompting Air France-KLM’s conversations with Veolia; certainly both industries face the challenge of rising fuel costs, but it probably takes less fuel to get a train from point A to point B. One must also consider how much weight/volume (people and cargo) can be hauled for the same amount of fuel.

But which mode of transport costs less to maintain? Is the cost of rail maintenance lower than aircraft maintenance? That’s hard to calculate, given the variety of differences between the two transportation modes. In general, jet aircraft machinery is more complex than that of trains, so it’s fair to assume that maintenance costs are much higher for airlines. However, rail transit must spend a substantial amount of money to maintain thousands of miles of track and hundreds of stations.

Enigma already has a strong track record (pun intended) for reducing costs and improving efficiency in aviation maintenance by providing parts and service information. Because most people and some cargo must reach far-off destinations quickly, there will always be a need for airline transport. But we fully expect to see growth in the rail industry, and along with it a growing demand for products such as Enigma 3C, InService MRO and InService EPC, which are currently implemented in rail transit companies to help them achieve similar benefits in their maintenance depots.

Rail travel seems to be making a bit of a comeback; according to the American Public Transportation Association, in the first quarter of 2008 there was a 3.42% increase over the same quarter last year in unlinked transit passenger trips (which includes light rail, heavy rail, buses and trolleys). Furthermore, CNN just reported today that U.S. cities are racing to cope with ever-increasing demand on public transportation as gas prices remain at record levels.

Several airlines probably sense a need to diversify to capitalize on this trend. After all, both airlines and rail are in the business of transporting people and cargo from one location to another. Therefore, it seems logical for the two industries to become closer. Don’t be surprised if you soon hear more airlines calling “ALL ABOARD!”

The Enigma InService Electronic Parts Catalog  (EPC) is a “one-stop shop” application that combines product and support information from multiple divisions and product lines, from multiple sources/systems, in multiple document formats. This podcast offers a mini product demo of the InService EPC solution and its service information functionality. 

In a nutshell, this functionality enables service technicians to look up a part, then reference the corresponding service documents and the links between them.  By clicking on the service information icon, installation instructions—including illustrations—appear for that part or assembly kit.  The end result is that service technicians are more efficient; they can more quickly find the relevant service documentation and make the necessary repairs.

 

 Podcast Video: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (155)

In a recent blog post titled “Parts is Parts…Or Is It Opportunity for OEMs?” Kristen Clark shares some analysis about automotive shoppers that indicates “year-over-year, 36% more customers are visiting parts websites, suggesting they may be looking to replace the parts before they replace the car.” As she breaks down the numbers it becomes clear that customers are not shopping for parts at the websites of the OEM or the OEM’s parts brand; instead, they are shopping for auto parts at independent retailers like NAPA and AutoZone.

This seems backward to me. To get new parts for an old Explorer the logical place to shop would be the Ford website. Yet, that’s not what happens, which raises a number of questions:

1. If aftermarket superstores have positioned themselves as a one-stop shop for all things automotive, how do the OEMs and dealers reverse this perception? Do any dealers have enough marketing clout to tackle this problem, or is it up to the OEMs?

2. What is the appropriate role for dealers in the aftermarket? Are they more interested in selling parts or services? For part sales, is their target audience the independent service station or the do-it-yourself car owner/weekend mechanic?

3. How can OEMs make it easy and cost-effective for customers to locate and purchase the correct parts while protecting the dealer/consumer relationship? Can the OEM manage the part ordering process and then hand-off the deal to a local dealer for order fulfillment?

Whether buying oil, shocks, fuzzy dice or mag wheels, people want a single location to get all the parts they need for their specific car. And they want it at a reasonable price. Enigma has the technology that addresses each of these questions. However the key to success will be innovative thinkers, at the OEMs and dealers, who have been empowered to use technology to forge tighter business relationships and deeper technology integrations between the OEM and dealer. If that can be achieved, then the infrastructure will be in place for the OEMs and dealers to beat the parts superstores at their own game.