The secret of a successful MRO IT System upgrade project

James Cornelius, President of ROTA

Technology walks readers through the journey of an MRO IT system upgrade project

All too many people view a software upgrade project as a trial of endurance with many hidden bear traps along the journey: but it needn’t be like that. With the right processes and organization plus the input of an expert guide, a project can be not only successfully completed but also a positive career experience for all the people involved. This article is about how to organize an upgrade project for a successful outcome with satisfied users. But before that, an introduction to ROTA technology.

Rota Technology

ROTA was formed in 2015 by some already experienced project leaders from larger companies. The company’s first contract was for a defense startup implementation located in a very austere environment. What evolved from that was a better way to come at MRO IT by focusing on project management discipline and common-sense customer engagement. Experience, since that start, has included ten implementations, 25 upgrades and 18 system evaluations with many ad hoc maintenance technology projects.

What Projects Entail

For ROTA, a key factor is that we need to build strong relationships with key personnel. Whether it’s a new client or a business with which we’ve worked in the past, it’s important to get access to key stakeholders and SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) from the IT and the Business sides of the airline to assemble a single team for the project.

First, our team will map out the task deliverables as well as both resources and hazards: this builds a good rapport early on between the SMEs in the client business and the ROTA team who will then build a project plan for approval and adoption by the client’s team. In this, the combined teams get through what can usually be very tough sessions such as cataloging the processes that the client already has plus the processes that ROTA has, and identifying any gaps. Pairing the right ROTA SME with their appropriate counterpart in the client’s business ensures that the process is extremely efficient and ROTA is able to guide the process and close any gaps.

As this phase draws to its end, ROTA partners with the client’s internal team, responsible for the software to be upgraded, to start indexing results around UAT (User Acceptance Testing), managing bugs and making decisions around functionality. This is also where the project inertia starts to have to be managed to keep things moving forward at all times. Finally, ROTA delivers post-upgrade support which is usually stand-alone but can be delivered in partnership with the client’s internal team.

So, why do airlines and MROs decide to upgrade their software?

The Decision To Upgrade An Mro It System

What is often overlooked with software upgrades or gets lost at the start of a project is the original reasons to make the upgrade. As a consultant, ROTA believes that it is valuable to dig into these original reasons to upgrade as deep as the customer will allow because, ultimately, those reasons will affect project nuances and tempo once underway. One example could be that, if the upgrade is necessary for a sympathetic system to work correctly, it’s important to make sure that the modules and departments are all focused on that. This is not to say that all aspects of an upgrade are not important but that special attention needs to be paid to those particular areas. Anything suspect has to be escalated with a higher priority.

Many upgrade decisions are based on a lot of the same reasons; either needing an upgrade or contemplating one. Sometimes, the approaching end of support for current versions of software, which might include a lot of backlogs of fixes and modifications, means that a growing number of software obsolescences can become a restricting factor for the airline or MRO’s ability to continue efficient operations. For all of these reasons, upgrading to the latest version of the system or to a new system can be a priority as well as to facilitate additional projects within the technology roadmap. The technology roadmap is dependent on a series of upgrades to move forward.

Project Planning

Notwithstanding all of that, it’s a big deal making the decision to upgrade. It can be emotional and there is always an element of risk with significant

Pr ocess

The start of the process is with discovery, initial meetings with users, management and stakeholders. This time is very important to the project: although it has to happen quickly. Based on experience, ROTA has a methodology that helps to understand the customer, their capabilities, shortcomings and, conversely, their strengths. Taking the time to properly understand stakeholders and SMEs’ perspectives helps mitigate any risks once the project is underway. It also establishes the background to ensure that the project is always putting the customer’s needs first.

These meetings help to understand the culture of a company, how rigid is their Project Management (PM) methodology and how end users interact with the management groups that run the business’s systems. It’s the first opportunity for ROTA to start working in its own PM Methodology which is to start levelsetting expectations based around a strict timeline adherence. This is also the time to start to plan for any data that might be affected along with configuration changes. Sometimes, the customers making the upgrade are on a tight schedule to, for instance, induct new aircraft; and some things cannot be put on hold while the upgrade is being accomplished. At other times there could be certain sympathetic applications that the new configuration might affect. It all has to be taken into account during the planning phase.

In many cases, the next step is to consider what levels of training will be required and whether the airline or MRO requires a niche modification that would completely change an SOP (Standard Operating Procedure). Also, it had to be established whether there might be changes to the UI (User Interface) and/ or UX (User eXperience) that front-line users could struggle with; it might be just a different look and feel but its impact has to be considered.

At this stage in any project, ROTA starts to baseline the user acceptance testing, meaning, how good are the client’s processes; will they just need to be complimented or will a complete re-write be necessary? All of this helps to work out when the project can plan for the cutover and how that will look. Each one of these planning sessions should give the upgrade project team an idea as to how long and to what depth post-upgrade support would need to be organized. After this round of due diligence is complete, with a project plan developed and approved by the client, there is no time to waste.

ROTA will send a team into the main workspace either in person, or in a virtual or hybrid manner. ROTA SMEs are paired with Client SMEs based on knowledge and experience — ROTA SMEs have often spent years working in the same jobs as the people they are paired with plus they have a deep understanding of information technology.

Core Project Tenets

Once the planning process is complete, ROTA executes the plan to some core

The first key tenet is project plan and project management. This is a collective road map that ties together multiple departments within the client’s business, multiple companies outside and countless people inherent to them all. As mentioned above, ROTA develops this road map by spending time with all stakeholders, learning the ins and outs of the organization, nuances, etc., but what is most important is that, once the kick-off is held, a strict project management discipline is put in place from day one. If tasks slide, it’s important to know why, if team members have road blocks, ROTA will clear them immediately: every plan has a different level of discipline based on company culture, biases and/or team members.

We’ve all heard things like, ‘this was how it was done in the past’ or have known places where the client company lacks inter-departmental collaboration. ROTA takes all that on and quickly institutes its own discipline to the project which is supported with regular meetings that hold people and, sometimes, processes accountable, every time, without exception. Remember that this was started in the planning phase but the pressure will be increasing incrementally each day, if not each hour. Everyone knows that you manage to the plan which also helps to drive change, whether subtle or dynamic, and proper engagement helps to drive both. By setting PM expectations early on, projects normally end on a high note instead of pushing and dragging people across the finish line.

Lastly, business process management: when a complete set of processes exists, testing becomes very easy to manage and document. This is not usually the case anywhere you go. ROTA uses a BPM (Business Process Management)

2.0 system to house, organize and then map to a clients’ unique business needs. This is typically where ROTA takes the customer partnership and engagement to a new level. For instance; usually the first task is to level set existing processes from both companies, airlines and software vendor, and identify new or missing processes. ROTA will work with the corresponding SMEs from the client, developing synergy and, again in short order, producing processes that could be used as test scripts. Throughout this process we also test application

PROJECT PLAN / PROJECT MANAGEMENT

• Pre-meetings with client team to assess and agree on resources, timeline, etc.

• Project plan developed by ROTA and approved by client

• Project kick-off meeting

BPMN 2.0 / CLIENT ENVIRONMENT SET-UP

• Processes designed and taught to client engineering department

• Processes developed by client’s ‘Software Admin’ department

• Merged and aligned client process with ROTA processes for test scripts

CUSTOMER PARTNERSHIP & ENGAGEMENT

• Super user engagement for alignment

• Department walkthroughs with ROTA SMEs

• New processes and editing of base processes

Maintaining Project Inertia

• Client engagement through respect of each other’s knowledge

• Persistency through a shared timeline/vision

• Engagement with customer members, management to endusers, during testing configurations, new or enhanced functionality and APIs with lots of sympathetic SWIM (System Wide Information Management) wins happening at the same time. Once the processes or set of processes are level-set, ROTA runs through an initial test and signs that off: the client SMEs follow up with their test and sign that off. This ensures that testing is only complete after a very robust and complete process in which both the client and ROTA have been closely involved. We all know that some processes are more complex than others so, where necessary, ROTA will continue to work with their counterparts in the client organization on the level-setting process. As this process continues and more test scripts are signed off, the more challenging the remaining ones become: this is where time lines usually start to stretch when the challenge is complexity or user issues such as having day jobs; ROTA relies on a disciplined project management approach, starting on day one, while managing project inertia. This is also where we start to blend the human factor with the software factor. Project management discipline and common-sense customer engagement allow the teams to very quickly work through any vendor-consultant biases to a place of mutual respect. All of this while keeping the project on point. Finally, managing project inertia. For some, this is possibly the hardest tenet to see through. It’s only possible if you are involved in every daily meeting or have seen every single SWIM win or discipline in the process of the level-setting phase of the project. One day, it could just be getting SMEs off the starting block, another day helping to influence a decision in a way that doesn’t cascade through the whole project and affect the timeline. It is constant and mostly comes from vast experience coupled with human and software factors meticulously blended. A couple of examples.

As we start to close out the testing, we’re holding initial meetings on the actual cutover, again managing inertia. Because one phase rolls into or overlaps with the next, there is no idle time. This also helps to push the closing out of testing. Pressure has been continuous and continues to increase incrementally. Another example is cutover. Cutover can be a very long night, entering data with complexities that, in most cases, require split second decisions: it’s the culmination of a lot of hard work coupled with very high stress. Whether doing it themselves or whether they’re doing it with a talented internal team, ROTA is there to help steady nerves and provide feedback on those decisions. Again, inertia; gently nudging one way or the other to make sure of the success. We’ve all seen what the effects of getting cold feet the night of cutover can cost; this is especially true in the loss of inertia, once it is lost on a sixty-day upgrade, it is almost impossible to get back.

Key Takeaways

First and foremost, the consultant and customer partnership is critical. The consultant has to understand the decision at all levels, the reasons to upgrade.

Customer engagement has to be developed throughout the whole process, planning the project, executing the project, utilizing core tenets. Finally, supporting the project when it’s complete to close it out successfully. Everyone should walk away, head held high after a successful project. No one upgrade is like any other, they are unique and should be treated as such. ROTA always takes a long hard look at every project to ensure that the next project is done even more completely and better.

I hope that readers have gained some value from this article to inform their own next upgrade or implementation project.

James Cornelius

James is an experienced MRO IT Program Manager with deep experience in both commercial and defense aviation software. Prior to starting ROTA, he spent nearly three decades working in aviation. Starting with Boeing and transitioning to FAR 121 carriers, James worked through the ranks to leadership roles across multiple departments in maintenance and engineering, and the IT world. He is a Veteran of the United States Marine Corps.

ROTA TECHNOLOGY INC.

With MRO systems projects and support spanning both the military and commercial markets ROTA brings proven experience to all sides of aviation. Specializing in system implementations and upgrades, ROTA brings deep knowledge of aviation business processes, integrated into custom built software. Aside from upgrades ROTA has completed a number of data projects from cleaning up aircraft configuration to system security overhauls plus training and ongoing admin support for any MRO IT needs.

Maintenance planning at

FedEx Express: Today and in the future

Roger L. Hutchinson II, Manager TechOps Strategic Mx. Planning and Elliot Margul, CEO Aerostrat share FedEx Express’s journey to a new and integrated maintenance planning solution

Like many airlines, six years ago, FedEx Express’s IT capability was based on old mainframe systems. However, with a large and growing modern fleet, the airline was looking for ways to streamline maintenance processes, including maintenance planning. Roger had always been of the view that maintenance planning should not be difficult and that there should be ways to automate it as well as the software to make that happen. That said, FedEx Express had never previously had access to the systems or the sort of software solutions available today. This case study is about how FedEx Express started to change that and how it found the right partner with which to achieve the necessary modernization of maintenance planning as well as the integration of that modernized solution with the rest f the business.

Fedex Express Maintenance Planning Goals

Let’s start with why FedEx Express needed a new software solution. Throughout its history, FedEx had implemented data systems both purchased from other carriers and developed in-house, and was looking for a better way to do things, such as having the ability to track defined tasks and to add their own data into a system. This was reflected in two sets of planning goals with the overall objective to modernize and streamline the business but which also identified several individual goals within those overall objectives. First, to modernize, FedEx Express needed:

• Improved speed of planning;

• A greater amount of detail;

• Better collaboration across planning and department;

• To provide a modern UI for legacy systems;

• To provide a platform to enable planners to make strategic planning decisions rather than ‘plan what’s next’.

The second set of objectives could be summarized as ‘streamline the business’ expressed as… streamline the planning process from plan to induction; hasten the process of understanding changes and variables via scenarios; automate as much as possible and ensure the team focuses on value-added tasks.

The Solution Selected And Implemented By Fedex Express

Aerostrat started six and a half years ago and was exhibiting for the first time at MRO Americas with what might best be described as the shell of a product compared with today. Notwithstanding that, two people from FedEx went to the booth and started a long conversation that turned into a longer and ongoing project which is the subject of this case study. Following that first meeting, Aerostrat and FedEx Express worked on the airline’s needs and pushed the software product in ways that had not been anticipated by its creators when they first built it, stretching the team and the product with different levels of innovation. Because of that, Aerostrat and FedEx Express commenced a multi-year project. Rather than just focusing the Aerostrat product on creating a modern maintenance planning solution for FedEx Express, it was instead used as interface for multiple legacy systems as well as, in the long run, being able to drive a large range of business simulation software.

The Aerostrat product, Aerros, is a heavy maintenance planning solution creating a platform for users to add whatever tasks they want to track, with all the necessary fleet data to a high level of detail. For either or both aircraft and aircraft models, users can create a utilization model that is static or set for an absolute date range. That information, with tasks, can be used to actually forecast every time that each requirement will have to be met, right up to end-of-life for each aircraft.

The solution then takes the constraints that are required to complete heavy maintenance with a range not limited to maintenance allocations or track allocations. Additionally, the system understands the compatibilities between tracks and requirements, and requirements and requirements. The solution also monitors and optimizes the yield goals for every single task: what is the minimum and maximum yield that’s allowed for each task and what is the target yield for each task. Furthermore, Aerros takes in capacity information down to the shift on a specific day and what is the amount of labor required to get the maintenance visit accomplished.

The system incorporates all these various data inputs and uses an auto scheduling tool to create an optimized plan that spans multiple years: almost all of Aerostrat’s customers maintain a five-year schedule with that information. The solution also offers users the ability to quickly edit the information, push the data out to stakeholders, edit any variable down to a day or a shift, re-flow the schedule and understand the implications of that change. From there, Aerros gives users the tools to analyze those outcomes so that they can understand what that variable will do if it did change or create a new maintenance plan as a result of that change.

Why Aerostrat was chosen

Early on, when FedEx Express and Aerostrat first started to meet, one of the things that attracted the airline to the software business was that, speaking with Aerostrat, it seemed that their goals lined up with those of FedEx Express. Also, being a small business at the time, they were very customer focused (figure 1).

Why Aerostrat was Chosen

“…when FedEx Express and Aerostrat first started to meet, one of the things that attracted the airline to the software business was that, speaking with Aerostrat, it seemed that their goals lined up with those of FedEx Express.”

FedEx Express had been looking around the market already and had looked at other products. However, when they met the team at Aerostrat, it seemed to be a better fit with the ability to take on some challenging tasks and FedEx was a significant challenge.

Implementing The New Solution

The conversations about maintenance planning and scheduling, allocation management and the future state of what planning would look like, revealed an instant connection between the two businesses with a lot of commonalities in thought. While the lengthy contracting process was underway, the joke was that FedEx serves 230 markets around the world, almost 90% of the GDP companies of the world, and can be just as big and bureaucratic as the anyone, including when it comes to getting a new software solution approved. But, during that process, the parties were able to work together over several meetings, some very in-depth discussions, testing the software, and a lot of questions back and forth. It gave Aerostrat a great chance to understand what FedEx Express was doing and it gave the airline a great chance to learn about better ways of doing things.

Also, FedEx Express found Aerostrat very responsive and adaptable looking at the legacy systems that the airline had and, to some extent, still has. At FedEx Express, Air Operations was the first division to completely migrate away from the green screen main frame systems to internally cloud based systems and the team at Aerostrat were a big part of that. Also, from a security standpoint, Aerostrat has met and exceeded all of the FedEx Information Security requirements, in fact feedback from FedEx’s information security people was that, for an at the time small company, it was surprising how well Aerostrat could handle security matters.

FedEx Express is currently going through four processes (figure 2) in which they’re currently at the enabling output and decision-making stage between ‘Streamlining data flows’ and ‘Enabling Output and decision making’.

The Plan

Stages of the implementation

The first stage was ‘Foundational’ (figure 3), bringing the software into FedEx Express, getting it white listed and getting all the communications going.

Foundational

Make sure Planners can continue job and expand functionality

§ Environment setup

§ Data migration

§ Loading data

§ Training Planners

§ Moving core workflows to Aerros

§ Planning one-way integrations from FedEx Express systems to Aerros

Figure 3

‘Streamlining data flows’ referred to legacy systems: Aerros was turned on at an early stage and some legacy software was turned off. Everybody involved was told about the new software and the go-live date but when the legacy software was turned

Performance Starts With A Plan

Since switching to Aerros, our customers have:

• Increased fleet size with minimal increase in overhead

• Increased plan detail by 9x and plan length by 4x

• Reduced time to budget by half data migration had to be done, loading a lot of data, and there had to be a training program. At the start, it was all Aerros data going into FedEx Express system with no flow the other way.

With the legacy system a simplistic method of maintenance event planning was employed. When there was a maintenance event that was aerostratsoftware.com info@aerostratsoftware.com about to fall due, there was also the next event that would come due of the same type, everything between those two events got pulled into that workscope. This was obviously not the best way to do it because there was a tendency to pull things into maintenance events that don’t belong there while not looking at the materials requirements or all of the other issues that go with it.

Learn how Aerros can dramatically improve your planning results today.

Integrations and streamlining data flows

Once the foundational steps had been completed and the planning team had been set-up so that they could at least continue doing their jobs, and while we began to really work on integrations, we also began to streamline data flows (figure 4).

Streamline Data Flows

Ensure planning is based on real-time information by implementing microservice-based interactions with legacy systems.

while Aerostrat’s Aerros was in the Cloud, the systems at FedEx were all Intranet and locally hosted on FedEx Express’s data centers. In order to talk to them, Aerostrat had to build side-to-side VPN implementations to tunnel through the firewalls and communicate with them in real-time. The other piece for Aerostrat was that they also had to implement SSO using Azure B to C to build the authentication systems both for users, so that every stakeholder at FedEx Express could log-in, but also to securely authenticate with both the VPN and the microservices that had been implemented. By doing all of this, Aerostrat set up an ability and function in conjunction with the foundational side to set up the next phases of the project.

Enabling output and decision making

Enabling Output and Decision Making

Key to realizing the objectives that FedEx Express is looking at is syncing FedEx Express’s data to the existing legacy systems (figure 5).

Extract Aerros output for analysis, decision-making, and downstream system usage

Data Insights Objectives

Implemented single sign-on (SSO)

This was a very technical, behind the scenes effort that required a large number of development hours. It began with Aerostrat looking at both systems and, as they were legacy systems, there were no APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) available plus, albeit that Aerros uses a service-based architecture and has over 700 out of the box APIs, none of them was compatible with FedEx Express’s system. Initially, Aerostrat needed to meet with FedEx IT on multiple occasions, then created a plan for both sides to build their own microservices so, that way, both systems could talk. The benefit of this and something that really sets apart the integrations at FedEx Express, is that Aerostrat created real-time integrations so that, the moment an aircraft lands that updates in the Aerros system just as it would in FedEx’s internal system. Similarly, the moment a schedule is published, and the five-year plan is available to all stakeholders, it’s possible to update all the necessary data in FedEx’s current legacy systems. So, Aerostrat created a real-time communication but the challenge here was that,

One major challenge over many years had been that it was always so hard to get data for FedEx’s data warehouse from legacy systems because there had to be someone who could write code to build a report either as an Excel spreadsheet or a printed report. Now, with the new data warehouse, FedEx Express has the ability in real time to make daily updates to the system, extract data and report migration. So, looking to the future, phase three and beyond, is not just the ability to forecast the next scheduled event but, putting in aircraft utilizations, specifications, hours and cycles — date driven things. FedEx Express will be able to project out events into the future and is looking to use that to forecast for multi-year budgeting, allocations such as landing gear forecasts. As an example, FedEx Express took delivery of its Boeing 777 fleet fairly close together with the first fifteen aircraft all arriving within a year and now, the airline is getting into landing gear changes. However, you can’t have fifteen landing gear changes in the triple seven fleet occur within fifteen months because there’s not enough gear available in the supply chain to support that and you can’t have all the aircraft grounded. So, a way had to be figured out to meter those first gear changes and then going forward into the future.

The Work Scope Builder/Planner in the part of Aerros that was being worked with at the time of writing, meant taking the two basic system in which the Workscope Planners work, but within those two systems are multiple screens and tabs. FedEx Express was then in the process of pulling all that into the Aerros product so the Workscope planner is within the one software piece and then that information is sent out to the various systems including FedEx Express’s main forecasting system of record (Workbench) and the Production Control System which manages the work packages that go to the worksites. Following the completion of that build, the airline moved into training and testing so that it could all go live in Spring of 2023. There were a couple of issues that arose with the go-live including that the purchasing Material Planning organization had been independently running a Landing gear overhaul report of which the Aerros implementation team was unaware. When the old system was turned off, that also turned off their report. But Aerostrat dealt with that and the old legacy system has now been properly turned off. Now, FedEx Express has the ability to generate over-the-horizon views which is also a part of the new system that the airline really likes.

Bridging the gap

Unifying the planning process is an important objective and one of the things that has been discussed at FedEx Express is integrating the materials systems and to have the materials system talking to the planning system and forecasting

Bridging the Gap

Reduce friction for each step from plan to induction

Objectives

§ Unify “Planning Processes” across all systems

§ Workscope Builder

§ Seamlessly integrate systems so they act as one

§ Automate workscope planning decision making

Key to Success

§ Auto Build Workscopes

§ Make workscope recommendations based on compatibility and risk

§ Humans analyze workscopes, then alter and approve

§ Workscope is then generated in dependent legacy systems

The Work Skill/Scope builder, which FedEx Express finds really exciting, is taking the process that s being done now, and beginning to automate that. So, as one scheduled maintenance event ends and a new event starts, the forecast is a B Check or a C Check and the plan is for Aerros to query the old forecasting system and begin to bring things in as it builds Work Scopes in advance with the idea being that, by the time that the aircraft is ready, two weeks to 45 days prior to induction, the planner would review what Aerros has suggested, either agree or disagree, and makes changes. Along with that, FedEx Express has to make sure that the right work is scheduled at the right event. For example, you wouldn’t want a pylon removal to be done during a 24-hour check; that needs to be planned well ahead.

A group of people from the FedEx Express Maintenance Planning & Scheduling organization have been involved in this at various levels of planning. Using a Safety Risk Assessment (SRA) methodology, they developed a Technical Risk Assessment with considerations such as, ‘does the aircraft require tanks to

Looking To The Future

Looking even further ahead, FedEx Express is looking at simulation software, multi-year planning windows, even life-cycle planning. Also under consideration is a capacity and demand system for the whole maintenance system and how that could be built. So far, they’ve come up with simulation software because once there’s a basic forecast for the next C Check cycle, that can be built out and requirements changed to allow for more or less aircraft, flying.

With that, let’s take a look at the Aerros system and what it will look like when the FedEx Express project is complete (figure 7).

Currently, Aerros is importing data from FedEx Express’s legacy compliance system to help the long-range planning team build their heavy maintenance plans; using this data to feed the long-range forecast, to set up their scenarios and, once those decisions have been made, publishing to all stakeholders. Further than that, the airline is also using the data to build their Work Scopes, for which purpose Aerostrat is building a customized Work Scope Building tool. The users will also take that data and feed it into other FedEx systems.

There are two pieces to this. One is a variety of different legacy systems, including the compliance system. The other one is the various analytics systems, including the data warehouse as well as the simulation systems. All of that Aerros data is being taken to provide the forecasts, the information and the actual plans that FedEx Express needs and then using that to update all the dependent systems that exist in the business today.

Looking forward, FedEx Express and Aerostrat want to continue to bridge the gap between long-range planning and production planning (figure 8).

Future Goals

Continue to bridge the gap between long-range planning and production planning

Real-Time Collaboration

Aerostrat is releasing real-time collaboration to streamline multi-user and multi-department planning objectives

Maintenance Planning Suite

Entire suite of planning solutions to cover all aspects of planning be most efficient. If there is a tool that allows you to see that over-the-horizon view, then you can see where things might go wrong because one thing that maintenance planning is pretty good at is telling people that they have a problem and even when it will manifest itself; now, everybody can see what is happening and that there will be that problem at that time.

Roger Hutcinson Ii

Roger started his career as a Helicopter Mechanic, he has worked as a Hangar Mechanic, a Logistic Support Analyst and in several managerial positions at FedEx Express, currently in Strategic Maintenance Planning. Roger holds an FAA Airframe & Powerplant qualification and Private Pilot’s license. He also has a BS in Aviation Management from Southern Illinois University and a MBA from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

Elliot Margul

Deeper, Dynamic Business Planning

Use Aerros’ multiple years of planning data, in combination with other business simulation software

Aerostrat is working on two big endeavors with FedEx Express input. The first is a real-time collaboration tool within Aerros. It will be a huge advancement, especially for larger carriers such as FedEx because of what it will enable planners to do. With real-time collaboration, planners will be able to see what the others are doing live. So, for example, on a scenario, they’ll each be able to see, regardless of individual geographical locations, which event they’re editing — as they drag and drop events, update work scopes, etc. The other thing on which Aerostrat is working with FedEx’s input is a maintenance planning suite initially focusing on Heavy maintenance but to include a power plant planning tool and a line planning tool.

Finally, FedEx Express is working towards using the data to support deeper dynamic business planning covering very important things like maintenance allocation management. The plan is also to make data available to other areas of the company such as finance because the data is in the information factory and is available for business planning, costing for the various levels and types of work scheduled for the year. Plus, the airline wants to know where are the traps, the over-the-horizon view. For instance, with the triple seven gear changes, if there was no way, other than intuitively, to know what was coming up, that wouldn’t

Elliot co-founded Aerostrat seven years ago. He began his career as a Reporting Analyst and later moved into Financial Planning & Analysis and founded Aerostrat to create modern planning and maintenance tools for Aerospace and Defense. Today, Elliot manages the business side of operations and develops Aerostrat’s product and corporate strategy. He has a BBA in Business from the University of Washington.

Fedex Express

FedEx Express, a subsidiary of FedEx Corporation, is a major American cargo airline and one of the world’s largest airlines in terms of fleet size and freight tons flown, delivering to more than 375 destinations over 220 countries across six continents each day. There are a total of 13 air hubs in the company’s worldwide network. The fleet of 285 aircraft ranges from Cessna 408 SkyCourier up to Boeing 777 and Airbus A300 types.

Aerostrat

Aerostrat offers one product called Aerros, a program that manages an airline’s or MRO’s aircraft maintenance schedule and enables users to optimize the maintenance program by managing various maintenance and operational constraints; maximizing event yield, driving costs down, and enabling the organization to plan proactively, not reactively. Aerros provides excellent system stability and reliability with standard IT practices. It is also integration-ready and designed to work as an extension of a user’s existing information systems.

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