Hungary for Aviation Maintenance Data!
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.
Tags: Air Transport Association, ATA, S1000D
