Charting an Optimal Course

Integrate with External Systems

Technical information — such as that used to maintain or operate existing and new-generation aircraft — should never be isolated from the operational systems that invoke it. Providing streamlined end-user access to external data or applications that can contextualize technical information and make it more actionable for content consumers is key to driving productivity improvements.

Typical integrations aerospace operators should include in their system are:

• CMS integration with a maintenance enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform to assemble work packages for visits;
• Viewer integration with aircraft health maintenance (AHM) or other fault code generating systems to allow pre-emptive assembly of work packages;
• Viewer integration to parts lookup or ordering systems to allow for replacement ordering at the worksite;
• Record management integration to keep track of maintenance work that has been performed on aircraft.

Aerospace OEMs may also benefit from CMS-based integrations to back-end infrastructure such as engineering product lifecycle management (PLM) applications that supply reusable text and imagery assets for use in the assembly of technical publications or related training materials.

The requirements for a multi-spec technical information management system discussed above assume that a system can support multiple information standards, the fundamental capability underlying a multi-spec system itself. In order to take in, store, and publish out information (as well as perform the other functions described above) regardless of its format, the most efficient system will allow an organization to support content for both legacy and next-generation fleets as well as take in, store, and publish out data — without requiring an organization to alter or abandon legacy document type definitions (DTDs). The key to this system is normalizing the content through on-demand data transformation.

Choosing how to normalize the data is the function of the system design. With the global aerospace industry moving to the S1000D standard, it becomes a natural standard by which to normalize your data. The system then that uses S1000D for normalizing the data will take advantage of a common source database (CSDB) for content management. It must also natively support multiple S1000D issues and the transformation of source content from other formats (iSpec 2200, MiL standards) to S1000D as part of the content import process. When delivered to users, data can be presented in S1000D or iSpec 2200, PDF and HTML publishing options to provide the required level of flexibility needed to support a wide array of spec-defined programs and contractual commitments from within a single publishing environment.

The access a new technical information management platform has to historical data greatly impacts an organization’s data continuity. Organizations should work with content end users and IT to identify the content that has value and relevance to the enterprise and select a migration approach that captures that value at the lowest possible cost. As operators and OEMs evaluate the wealth of often unstructured content that underlies their businesses, selecting an optimal approach to get the benefits of this content without the cost or delay can be accomplished through examining legacy application server logs, polling end users, or reviewing contract commits to determine which content needs to be augmented for continued use versus simply archiving it for periodic reference.

As more airlines take delivery of Boeing 787 Dreamliners – and as Airbus ramps up production of the Airbus A350 – every organization in the civil aviation ecosystem will need to support some combination of these capabilities to fulfill its existing and new-generation aircraft program requirements. Let’s take a look at the options for acquiring a multi-spec technical information management system.

Evaluating product and solution-based approaches

A perennial question for organizations assessing their options to meet evolving technical information management requirements is ‘build or buy?’ Or, put another way, does my organization get the best long-term ROI (return on investment) from a content solution that is uniquely crafted to suit my needs (the ‘build’ approach in which a tailored solution is deployed) or one that uses commercial off the shelf (COTS) products that are configured rather than customized to meet the business’s information management needs?

The answer depends on the demands of the marketplace and the needs of the organization operating within it. There are both pros and cons that are worth discussing to understand the implications of this decision for aerospace companies as they consider how to meet their needs in the evolving landscape for technical information management.

‘Build it’ – the custom solution approach

The lure of a custom solution is an easy one to understand. After all, what organization wouldn’t want an application designed from the ground up to meet its business’s unique needs? A tailored approach to meeting an organization’s business and technology requirements carries strong benefits, from improving business processes, facilitating regulatory requirements, helping technicians perform tasks faster and completely matching the operations needs and processes, lowering the cost of publications, and more.

However, to meet the requirements outlined above, the functional scale is daunting even for the largest organizations. This approach typically involves a blend of commercial packages, open source offers, and heavy systems integration and custom development components to create a solution tailored to the needs of the organization.

The consequences of such a pieced-together solution are multifold, including higher costs and more complexity to meet custom requirements, the lack of proven reliability in a live production environment, little to no industry-specific functionality, costs for on-going support, longer time from funding to implementation, and long-term flexibility of the solution. By building custom features and functionality without the benefit of a broad user base, a manufacturer or operator seeking to implement their own technical information management solution is in effect building a product for a market of one. While this may sound like a cozy arrangement, what it means long-term for most organizations is an underfunded infrastructure that lacks the broad investment needed to grow features or functionality in response to or in anticipation of market needs.

In essence, the ‘build it’ approach to meeting technical information management and delivery requirements is a valid one, but only for organizations whose scale of operations is sufficiently large to ensure continued, ongoing investment in system capabilities in the absence of a broader community of like-minded adopters.

‘Buy it’ – leveraging a COTS product

In light of the drawbacks of the ‘build it’ approach, the traditional ‘safer’ option in many application procurement situations is to buy a fully productized solution. This option may be suitable for many organizations, including small or mid-sized ones willing to change their current business practices to adhere more closely to broadly defined industry best practices as modeled in COTS products.

For some airlines a COTS solution, such as those provided by airframe OEMs or entry-level commercial software publishers, may meet their basic content capture, revision management, and distribution needs. Particularly for carriers with small or homogenous fleets, the COTS option may represent an optimal approach in which the organization adopts both a full-fledged authoring and revision capability, but without the cost of complexity that comes from a custom-developed solution mentioned above.

For OEMs the more complex requirements around the authoring and distribution of multi-spec content to a wide array of manufacturing and end-customer content consumers is a more difficult challenge, one that is not well-met with a highly specialized offer due to both the complexity of the data being authored as well as the program-specific transformation and packaging delivery requirements.

For those considering the COTS route to adopting a new technical information delivery capability, there are a number of considerations including:

• Willingness of the organization to change its existing practices: since the software is being adopted in a more or less ‘as is’ form, the organization will typically need to change its business processes to better align to the tool.
• Vendor viability: since adopting a comprehensive technical information management system will be a commitment of 10 years or more for most airlines and OEMs, ensuring the financial and technology viability of the vendor being considered is key to avoiding the trap of relying on an unsupported, legacy tool. Organizations should evaluate the vendor’s track record in production environments as well as their domain knowledge and active participation in organizations that address evolving technology challenges in civil aviation.
• Roadmap and vision: since a COTS purchase represents a long-term commitment to a set of vendor-driven features and functionality over which the adopter will have little direct control, ensuring that the roadmap and product vision are complete and consistent with the organization’s identified needs is a critical step. A product lacking a coherent long-term roadmap with clear R&D support – signaling ongoing investment in the solution, or rather lack thereof – is probably a poor choice.

‘Blended’ approach – best of both worlds?

As is often the case, a middle approach to addressing the technology acquisition question is sometimes the most advisable for risk mitigation and outcome optimization. In the case of selecting a core technology upon which to build a multi-spec technical information management system, this middle approach involves selecting a best-of-breed (BoB) COTS product as the basis for a solution, then extending it judiciously to meet an organization’s specific needs.

In this model, extensions to the core product are done in partnership with the software provider to ensure to the greatest degree possible that extensions are made in a way that will be compatible with future updates to the core platform, and that they are architected in a manner that is compatible with the underlying COTS application.

For example, most COTS solutions should provide some level of support for the core functionality outlined in the requirements section namely:

• Content capture / revision management to process inbound content from the source;
• Authoring to allow new content creation and edits;
• Content and process management to drive change management process and implementation;
• Publishing to deliver content where, when, and how it is required;
• Viewing where content is needed most;
• Support for regulatory compliance, including reporting;
• Feedback capture to continually improve content, process, and product.

Some of the areas where you can expect to customize a COTS technical information management solution most effectively are listed below.

• For airlines…
  • Workflows and business rules for content creation and revision management to ensure continuity of internal and OEM change histories for use in compliance reporting and rapid, defensible change management.
  • Viewer integrations to back-office ERP, maintenance, illustrated parts catalogs (IPC), and other platforms to improve productivity of maintenance staff using technical information by linking directly to ‘adjacent’ systems to make technical information more relevant.
  • Back-office integrations between the technical information management infrastructure and ‘systems of record’ (ERP, CRM, etc.) to allow changes to source systems such as parts databases to flow seamlessly to technical publications.
  • Style customizations for manuals and task cards to match an airline’s brand and naming conventions.

• For OEMs…
  • Content pipelines to manage program-driven receipt and delivery of structured content between partner suppliers and end-customer users. These pipelines typically provide processing features like validating to a specific schema or DTD, transforming within or across specifications, or filtering of data based on a particular set of conditions or effectivities. Pipelines can allow the same content to support multiple program commitments spanning manual types and specifications with minimal manual rework.
  • Taxonomy management for managing industry, product, and region specific terminology needed to facilitate content usability. Taxonomy and terminology management allow authors to create content that is compliant, then to maintain it dynamically as business and regional needs dictate with minimal manual re-work.
  • Supplier / customer portals to automate the capture and delivery of content in ways that are compliant with contract terms and maximize content reusability across the supplier ecosystem while ensuring protection of intellectual property and tracking of outbound technical information assets (watermarking where appropriate, etc.).
  • System integrations to source content systems such as PLM (product lifecycle management), engineering and materials management with a goal to increase reuse of content whenever it is available.

A final note

Whether an organization opts for a build, buy, or a blended approach to establishing a multi-spec system for managing technical information, the considerations do not end with those discussed here.

Airline operators and OEMs also will need to evaluate their application hosting and service delivery model. For example, they should determine if they will opt for an on-premise solution or for a hosted solution. If they select the latter, then they will need to evaluate if they will use a private or a cloud-based model. Another consideration is using a traditional software licensing model or a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model.

Finally, whereas this article has discussed the technology considerations in supporting a multi-spec environment, one cannot under-estimate the level of effort required to support user adoption of a new system and the related change management support required to make a new system successful. Both topics merit further discussion within an organization to lay the foundation for success.

From theory to practice: lessons from early adopters

Charting a course to meet technical information management requirements in a multi-spec world presents a wealth of questions and options to participants in the civil aviation ecosystem. In the final article of this series, we’ll move from theory to practice to see how early adopters are addressing OEM and airline requirements to support new-generation aircraft programs in parallel with existing aircraft programs