Going Electronic #1

Choosing the Software

The software you choose is going to seriously affect your efficiency, profitability, and the quality of your work environment. Good software can make your life easier and can have a positive effect on the service you provide, but implementing the wrong program can be an expensive and frustrating exercise. We think that the more you know, the better the chance that you'll decide WinAir is your best option.

Many of the people who contact us have already suffered the consequences of choosing an application that was not suited to their business, or one that simply didn't do what it claimed. Often, this could have been avoided had they asked the right questions.

Integrating Maintenance and Inventory

Integrating your Maintenance and Stores departments so that they work together effectively is often a challenge. Most organizations abandon the idea of using a single software system to manage both departments, usually because the designers didn't make the application flexible enough to allow it to work in the real world. On the other hand, if the two departments remain more-or-less autonomous, you miss out on a huge opportunity for increased efficiency and quality control. Striking a balance that works is one of the toughest things for developers to design. At AV-Base, we've had over ten years to perfect the processes we use. We have also had the benefit of input from hundreds of users. WinAir can actually make integrating your maintenance and stores departments easier.

For efficiency and quality control, we believe that it is imperative that the two departments share the same rotable component files. If the records department has a list of the components installed on your aircraft, and the stores department has an unrelated list of components in stock and out for repair, keeping the two synchronized is virtually impossible. If they disagree, how many spares do you really have? And where are they? And what is the correct TSN/TSO?

If the information available to both departments ? and to management ? is going to be reliable, they need to share the same data files. But this is not so simple:

• What if tech-records wants to install a component that stores hasn't issued?
• What if tech-records is setting up a new aircraft and the components didn't come through stores?
• Where do components go if tech-records' personnel have removed them, but have not yet arrived in stores?
• What if stores wants to send a component out for repair but records has not removed it yet?
• Where do components go if stores has issued them and tech-records has not installed them?

To make this work, WinAir mirrors the real world as closely as possible. With some limitations, the same part can be installed on an aircraft and be in stock or out for repair at the same time. We allow this because we realize that tech-records often lags behind the rest of the process. Each serialized component has ONE record in ONE component file and WinAir keeps track of where BOTH departments think it is. To a limited degree, stores and tech-records can temporarily disagree about the location.

A user can return a component to stores and send it for repair BEFORE tech-records has removed it, but it can't be returned to stores from one aircraft if it is still installed on a different one. And a part can be issued to an aircraft without the need to immediately install it. In fact, records can even install it on a different aircraft, but it can't be installed on one aircraft if it is already installed on another.

This functionality allows each department to function without relying too heavily on the other, but WinAir will only allow discrepancies to exist for as long as should be necessary for everyone to do their jobs properly.

And if the stores and records locations are blank, the part is probably on a bench somewhere, or sitting on somebody's tool box? just like in the real world.