When it comes to repairing a Bobcat tractor (or similar heavy equipment), customers often turn to a Bobcat dealer because special tools, skills, service and parts information are required. However, with the incredible quantity of cars on the road, consumers often have a choice between an OEM dealership and an independent repair facility (IRF) for automotive repairs.

Lately there has been renewed debate about whether carmakers are obligated to share their proprietary service information and tools with anyone that may want it—their franchised dealers, IRFs and consumers. The Right to Repair legislation, formally known as Motor Vehicle Owners Right to Repair Act (HR 2048), was first proposed in Congress in early 2005, aiming to "require automakers to provide the same service information and tools to independent auto and maintenance shops, as well as to consumers, that the automaker dealership service centers receive."

This legislative effort appears to have the support of some civic organizations and the aftermarket industry. For example, in early 2009 The Auto Channel quoted Aaron Lowe of the Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association (AAIA): "there are more than five million cars registered in Massachusetts that need easily accessible and affordable service. If car manufacturers can dictate where you have your car repaired then you have lost your right to choose. This legislation asks the question, who owns your car?"

However, the Automotive Service Association has gone on record to disagree with the Right to Repair argument, including a series of six videos posted by the ASA. Each video features several IRF owners who actually oppose the Right to Repair legislation. They state very clearly that when they need parts or service information, they can always get what they need from the National Automotive Service Task Force web site. (NASTF's web site says it was "established to facilitate the identification and correction of gaps in the availability and accessibility of automotive service information, service training, diagnostic tools and equipment, and communications for the benefit of automotive service professionals.") In fact, if you click on NASTF's OEM service web sites page, it links to all the major car manufacturer service sites, where information can be easily downloaded.

So, it seems there is some lively debate about the necessity of this Right to Repair legislation.

Here are some points to consider:

1. Right to Repair advocates claim they want owners and service technicians to have "access to the computers that control the systems and components that affect the safe operation of their automobiles."  Truth is, cars have become much more complicated machines, involving sophisticated electronics that require special tools and service information for proper diagnosis and repair. It's nostalgic to remember those days when our neighborhood mechanic could fix anything and everything on our vehicles. In 20+ years of owning a car, I have occasionally brought my car into a dealership for service, but I've never had to do so; my local mechanic could fix whatever was broken. However, I realize that although many things can be fixed by a local mechanic, some things can't. Someday something more complicated might go wrong on one of my cars, requiring dealership service. Between the complexity of today's cars and the very real concern for liability, it seems reasonable that certain automotive systems should only be repaired by a properly certified mechanic. Nevertheless, I agree that it's a problem for a car owner if the nearest dealership is 100 miles away (heck, even 30 miles away is a nuisance).
2. Do IRFs truly want the burden of keeping their shops outfitted with the necessary equipment and skilled mechanics to handle every service repair? And even if they do want that challenge, can they realistically afford to keep pace with the latest OEM developments and computer technology? Since IRFs run a volume business, based on fixing all makes and models quickly and efficiently, aren't they focused on the most frequent car repairs? Why worry about programming electronic modules? Nevertheless, this is a business decision the IRF must make.
3. There is no such thing as a free lunch. It costs OEMs money to create, publish and distribute proprietary parts and service information. Being forced to deliver and maintain that information to a larger network of users will naturally cost OEMs more time and money, and those costs will ultimately be passed on to consumers. (After all, this won't be a one-time publishing of content to the web; all updates, service bulletins, safety notices and other revisions must be made available and tracked for legal/compliance purposes. With a significant increase in the user-base, more servers and sophisticated access control will be required to protect and maintain the data.) Consumers will surely complain about increased costs from implementing the Right to Repair legislation but we can't expect the OEMs to carry the costs for their competitors. 
4. OEMs may be legally obliged to offer better support to their dealer networks because the dealerships pay franchise fees to the OEM; and in some cases the dealers pay subscription fees to obtain the latest service and parts information. We all know that dealers don't make much profit selling cars; the profit comes from the service department. (Part of the reason dealers pay OEM franchise fees is to provide complete repair services for a specific automotive brand. Therefore, it's understandable if these dealers expect exclusive rights to certain service and parts information.)
5. Some reports indicate that the primary forces driving Right to Repair legislation are the aftermarket component manufacturers. There is a claim that these 3rd party parts makers are looking to gain access to proprietary OEM information so that they can build cheap knock-off components. As with any new piece of legislation, it would be nice to know the true motives and the true beneficiaries. Too often, new consumer protection laws fail to work as advertised.

It's interesting to note that for Enigma, Right to Repair legislation might actually be beneficial. Enigma offers OEMs a new approach to providing customer/dealer support therefore, Right to Repair could force OEMs to re-think their aftermarket strategy and that could be to our favor. However, I wonder if Right to Repair is truly necessary?.

Whether or not the Right to Repair legislation passes, Enigma software simplifies the distribution of parts and service information to whatever channel the OEM chooses; the Enigma electronic parts catalog software helps service technicians fix things more quickly and accurately, no matter where their service bay is located.

Accelerating mean-time-to-repair (MTTR) and turnaround-time (TAT) requires a new approach that hinges on activities at the beginning of a service visit. Much can be done to improve the inspection and analysis of equipment—trains, planes, automobiles, oil rigs, etc—which is when the scope of the job and the work plan is being established. This phase of the service visit will determine if the repair is fast or slow, and most maintenance solutions can't do a thing to improve it.

I bring this up for two reasons: 1) the inspection phase determines the work to be done and so plays a critical role in accelerating MTTR; 2) inspection consumes about 30% of total service time, which is a significant portion of TAT. (30% for inspection time has been reported by aircraft MROs and office equipment OEMs, so it seems like a reasonable value to use.) However, none of the EAM/MRO/ERP vendors offers a good solution for accelerating the inspection process. While optimizing maintenance schedules, work assignments and resource allocations is great functionality, it doesn't make equipment diagnosis any faster or more accurate. EAM/MRO/ERP software is based on a relational database that tracks discrete machines, tasks, people and parts, so while it's good for tracking progress and procuring resources, it doesn't help much for inspections. When a mechanic needs to verify a problem, they want service documents, not a database.

Once a problem has been confirmed, a maintenance plan must be established—typically consisting of one or more job cards (work cards). Most companies modify the OEM's job cards to suit their specific needs and manually load the tasks from each job card into the EAM/MRO/ERP database. (Loading this data brings more automation to the scheduling process.) While the lack of integration between OEM job cards and the maintenance database is bad, job card tasks are frequently superseded by service bulletins, engineering orders and regulatory requirements, which is worse. When that happens, the EAM/MRO/ERP database must be updated—a manual and time-consuming process. And the more equipment in the database, the more often updates are required. As a result, keeping the service database accurate becomes a full-time job—for a team of people.

For the foreseeable future, inspection will remain a manual process. Equipment with on-board diagnostics and remote monitoring will help, but it takes a long-time to develop, install and calibrate all the different electronic sensors that would be required to catch more than a fraction of the maintenance problems. To improve the situation, two things are needed: 1) interactive solutions based on service manuals that help mechanics interpret the condition of the equipment, compare it to the maintenance requirements, and feed that information into the database; 2) a way to compare updates (new revisions, SB, EO, TR, AD, MSDS, etc) to the current maintenance process and drive any approved changes into the EAM/MRO/ERP database. Companies need solutions that understand documents rather than databases, schematics not schedules.

Enigma provides this type of software. Enigma augments the EAM/MRO/ERP system by providing updated, integrated service and parts information, which accelerates the process of equipment inspection and delivers faster MTTR and TAT.

As more companies pursue lean and six-sigma for service, it's important to recognize that one of the largest bottlenecks to productivity sits at the very beginning of the maintenance process. Get the diagnosis right, ensure the job cards are accurate and then let the EAM/MRO/ERP software set the optimal schedule. That's how you improve uptime.

(Previous blog posts discussed lean/six-sigma in service and the "long-tail" of complex equipment maintenance for high-tech equipment and for aircraft.)

While this blog post does not include any direct quotes, the topic was inspired by an article in the October/November 2009 issue of Aircraft Commerce, "Improving the efficiency of hangar check planning & execution".

I have a colleague that goes mountain biking in the desert. The other day he told me that given the choice between a map and a GPS, he would take the map. When considering GPS, he had some pretty obvious concerns regarding weight, durability and power requirements. But beyond those issues, his choice was based on his belief that a map has more information than a GPS, and that a map provides more context and range than a GPS. My friend is not old-fashioned; far from it, he is an early adopter of most technology. That's what makes his reliance on paper documents so curious.

This approach is not unique. Equipment OEMs, dealers and owner/operators are still tenaciously hanging on to their paper parts catalogs and maintenance manuals. Eliminating paper from the maintenance process is difficult because, like maps, even when paper documents are out-of-date they still provide a little bit of guidance. Like my friend who rides his bike into the wilderness, these companies are afraid of getting lost—except in their case the risk is lost revenue.

Let's see how else my colleague's analogy applies.
1) Does a paper map contain more information than a GPS? It depends. Paper maps have been specifically designed to pack the maximum amount of information into the minimum space. However, this information density also makes them quickly go out-of-date. If you are travelling in the wilderness, where things don't change real fast, an old map may work just fine. If however, you are trying to navigate the streets of Boston during construction season, you may need daily (or even hourly) updates.

How does this apply to maintenance? When told about plans to move to Enigma the most common question from dealers is, will the data be more accurate? (The answer is, yes.) The dealer's concern is not about the format of information but about its accuracy. With all the service bulletins, engineering changes and part modifications being issued by OEMs, if the electronic maintenance environment is not accurate then a dealer is better off swimming in a sea of paper.

(As an aside, the dealers' question is somewhat amusing because most of them already have some electronic data from the OEM or a 3rd party. Yet dealers still worry about accuracy. If dealers don't receive instant updates their mechanics will always have concerns.)

2) Does a map provide more context and range than a GPS? It all depends on the GPS. As previously stated, a map packs a lot of data into a single document. A GPS is meant to remove clutter, and focus the user on one thing at a time. The question is therefore, how much data is in the GPS? Certainly a handheld GPS is no match for the electronic navigation systems in today's cars, which in turn are no match for the multi-function devices and primary flight displays in modern aircraft.  While my friend prefers a map, you would be hard-pressed to find a pilot that will sacrifice his GPS in favor of a paper sectional (map).

How does this apply to maintenance? Just like an airplane GPS, a modern electronic parts catalog includes far more than parts. It includes maintenance manuals, troubleshooting guides, service bulletins...anything related to keeping a machine up-and-running. This abundance of data is the equivalent of what my friend calls "context and range"—the ability to see the big picture from a small screen. This is critically important when mechanics encounter an unexpected, or non-routine, maintenance requirement—which happens more than 30% of the time. In such a circumstance, mechanics need access to any and all relevant data. It's the only way they can minimize downtime.

So what's the conclusion, paper maps or GPS? If you're going into the desert, a map will do just fine. If you're travelling in the city, a GPS is a better choice. And for anyone that works in the ever-changing aftermarket, go for the electronic parts catalog (EPC); it's the easiest way to increase performance of service and parts operations. Of course there is one area where a map beats a GPS. When you're cold in the desert, you can always get warm by burning your map. (But please recycle your maintenance manuals, all that paper would make for a dangerous fire.)

In my previous post (The New Flying Fortress) I suggested that the way Boeing and Airbus deliver technical data is unsuitable for modern day maintenance systems. This post describes how OEM data formats limit the airlines, forcing them to treat maintenance planning (ERP/MRO) and maintenance execution as separate worlds. The difference is like getting a vinyl record album when all you own is an iPod.

Part of the problem with OEM data is historic; the maintenance manuals for many older fleets were not created according to AMTOSS standards. But the main problem is that OEMs designed their systems as a standalone/closed environment.

How can you tell if a technical document is standalone (i.e. for reference only)?

PDF format — When OEMs deliver manuals in PDF, they're telling airlines they don't care about business productivity. PDF  is of limited use for integration, automation or e-commerce.  In fact, PDF is designed to behave, quite literally, like electronic paper.

1. Scanned PDF displays text as a raster image, like a picture, so that a person can read it but a computer cannot. Optical character recognition (OCR) may convert the raster to computer text but conversion accuracy raises valid concerns for highly regulated industries like aviation and there is very little automation possible.
2. Standard PDF allows cut/paste and search/extract of specific text strings, allowing some level of automation, but the result will be a customized solution that must be closely monitored and maintained.

For example: Most airlines receive Boeing MPD (maintenance planning document) in PDF format.  However, they create this document using sophisticated tools and could easily publish it in a more usable format such as SGML, XML or MS-Excel spread sheets (like Airbus does).

Structure, layout and presentation — OEMs often design their technical content for printed paper, not for computer displays. Such an approach means that the maintenance information can be easily understood by mechanics but presents a greater challenge for computer systems. On paper it may look good, but a deeper look at the data reveals:

1. Inconsistency with the ATA spec—yet it still prints properly
2. Missing data tags—important information that isn't properly marked
3. Fragmentation—related information marked as separate topics

OEM maintenance data that comes in PDF format or that has inconsistent design cannot be easily linked to the airline's ERP system. Without this integration, maintenance accuracy, efficiency and costs, will suffer.

As an example, inventory management and forecasting is critical to an airline. One of the most important features of ERP/MRO is the management of parts, tools, equipment and resources. In the ERP system airlines need to have:  master configuration, parts list, alternative items and important part attributes such as position, symmetry, interchangeability, priority and serialization.

Having the illustrated parts catalog (IPC) as a paper document may be handy when standing next to the aircraft, but it doesn't help much when planning maintenance and inventory.  What is really important is to know the correct parts beforehand and to understand which parts can be used in each location. In that sense, even if the OEM's IPC is delivered in SGML/XML (not PDF) it is still for reference only. Here are a few examples of the problem:

1. Alternative item group (AIG)—Alternate parts can be inferred from the documentation, but it is not provided in the actual part data. Explicit references to alternate parts are sometimes included, other times they're only mentioned within the text, or they may only appear in the PNR (the part index section of the IPC).
2. Interchangeability information—In this case Boeing claims to have adopted the Airbus attribute, but they're not using it. It appears in the document type definition (DTD), that specifies how computers should interpret various tags, but it has never been added to the data itself. Airbus is slightly better, but still this information is often missing. One might assume that the master configuration interchangeability is always one-way, but when you get to the unit configuration it is hard to tell.
3. Position, symmetry, priority—All behave in the same manner.

When airlines request the original structured information they can get it...sometimes. (Maybe if they're a really big customer.) But the IPC is an example of a larger problem of data quality and consistency that holds true across all the maintenance manuals. In an industry that operates some of the world's most sophisticated machines, and has some of the highest safety concerns, the documentation strategy of Boeing and Airbus is sending the cost of maintenance into the stratosphere.

Will the OEMs ever provide data in a format that ties into the airline's MRO/ERP and improves maintenance and planning? Or will they try and force airlines to use proprietary applications that don't?  Today, mechanics are getting aircraft information off the equivalent of a record player, when what they really need is an iPod.

by Jonathan Yaron
CEO, Enigma

In the manufacturing world, electronic parts catalogs (EPC) are a critical business system because they hold the key to aftermarket revenues and profits. The strategic function of an EPC is to manage the parts and service relationship between manufacturers (OEMs), dealers and customers. A modern EPC includes complete parts information (BOM), drawings, and different types of maintenance and troubleshooting manuals. The EPC also contains a pick list that will populate a shopping center/order management system. This means that the EPC essentially connects the point-of-service to the supply of spare parts, which are maintained by an ERP system like Oracle or SAP. (Spare parts can be either mechanical or software components.) This blog post is the first in a series that will discuss the pros and the cons of deploying your EPC using a SaaS (Software as a Service) model or as an in-house enterprise software application.

When you compare a SaaS EPC to an enterprise EPC, the major considerations are: cost, time-to-market, return-on-investment (ROI), integration to OEM systems (ERP), integration to dealer management systems, IT involvement and software customization, protecting intellectual property, initial data migration and ongoing revisions/updates, and ongoing customer support to the dealers. The final topic in the series will be my recommendations for deploying an EPC strategy.

Cost, time-to-market and ROI are directly tied to the OEM business model. As a result, this is the first topic to be discussed. SaaS and enterprise applications are at opposite ends of the implementation spectrum; one is an outsource model, the other keeps things in-house. For a division-level EPC, SaaS allows a very fast deployment (a few months) and a relatively small initial investment. On the other hand, an enterprise EPC will be a significant investment and will take a longer period of time (minimum of 12 months). SaaS costs can be covered by the operational budget while an enterprise approach typically requires a CAPEX investment (with a long and tedious budget process). Over time, SaaS will cost more (5-10 years horizon) however, even in the short term the enterprise approach can have a lower total-cost-of-ownership (TCO). (It is important to compare apples-to-apples with regard to EPC functionality, integration, and recurring data update and transaction costs.) 

In most cases, a SaaS EPC will only need approval from the business manager, and will not require significant IT involvement. (However, it comes at the expense of back-office integration and automation.) The SaaS approach may not require an RFP or a bidding process and can be implemented as a pilot project that grows into a larger rollout. Because there is very little IT involvement, there is no internal budget of any significance.  The only involvement of IT may be the initial data migration effort and help setting the upload of ongoing data updates. (In many cases this process is controlled by the business as well).

An enterprise EPC will typically require a RFP, or at least a bidding process, with a well-defined requirement document. The enterprise approach will require a complete budget process including external budget (for outside vendors) and internal budget for project management, IT integration and hosting (including hardware and software related to enterprise apps i.e. web servers, web services, database etc). 

Both SaaS and enterprise EPCs have advantages and disadvantages. Beyond cost and time-to-market, a critical aspect of success is achieving business goals for ROI and TCO.

In my next blog, I will discuss integration of the EPC pick list to OEM back office systems (including single sign-on), integration to local dealer management systems, and IT involvement and software customization.

The folks at Carlisle & Company put together a fascinating two-part series called, "58,976 - Transformational Objectives For 2010" (Part 1 & Part 2). While the article talks about Cat Logistics' successful efforts to improve warehouse productivity in 1995, the purpose of the story is to encourage OEMs to set (and achieve) aggressive, numeric goals that improve their aftermarket business. The authors argue that successful goals must be easily understood by everyone in the organization and that having too many measurements, or overly sophisticated ones, will fail.

They go further by recommending that OEMs not waste time looking for the "perfect" measurement, just pick one goal that supports a larger business objective and go. (As long as the selected measurement plays a role in achieving a business objective—like cost reduction, revenue generation, market share growth, etc—having a singular focus on a simple goal/measurement will have the desired effect.)

The authors then look at five focus areas within OEM aftermarket business to identify goals that meet these criteria, and to highlight best-in-class (BIC) results. (Keep in mind that the goal must be simple to understand and measure but, if achieved, has benefits that are deeply-felt by the business.)

It turns out that two of Carlisle's focus areas—Sales/Marketing and Service—can be significantly improved using Enigma's technology. Looking at the goals for Sales and Marketing the recommended measurements are: service retention; satisfaction with OEM support (for improving service retention); satisfaction with wholesale support (accessories, mechanical and collision); website capability; and dealer satisfaction with OEM marketing support. Looking at the goals for Service the recommended measurements are: owner service satisfaction; fixed-right-the-first-time [we call this first-time-fix-rate (FTFR)]; dealer service manager satisfaction; and technical support. (See the Carlisle blog for the specific goals and BIC measurments that should be targeted.)

To understand how this works let's look at the FTFR measurement in the Service category. FTFR can be a frustrating goal for OEMs to target because it is largely controlled by the dealer channel. (FTFR is tied to quality of maintenance execution.) However, Carlisle points out that technical support—another important objective—has a significant impact on FTFR. This is relevant because the accuracy and usability of technical support material is entirely in the hands of the OEM. And dealers rely on the technical support materials when they perform service. Therefore, if an OEM sets a goal to have BIC technical support materials, dealers will deliver better service and FTFR will improve. That means OEMs should make measuring and improving "satisfaction with OEM support" a focus objective. (It is simple to measure and has far-reaching benefits.) We can even carry the example further and show how improved FTFR delivers improved owner satisfaction (dealer loyalty), which drives improved dealer service manager satisfaction (brand loyalty), and so on.

See how this works? When you focus on improving OEM technical support, many other important aftermarket goals can also be achieved. A similar case can be built around the objectives in the Sales and Marketing category.

At this point, I hope no one is asking themselves, "So what?" Anyone responsible for aftermarket revenues should recognize that Carlisle has done you a tremendous service by sharing key objectives that, with the right organizational focus, can have a transformational effect on your aftermarket business. Carlisle provides the objectives that will have a significant impact on the bottom line of your aftermarket. Enigma provides the technology that simplifies your ability to achieve those objectives.

"Flying fortress" was the nickname of the Boeing B-17 WWII bomber, and indeed it was. It was a high flying, long range, durable, versatile, complex (and in many ways beautiful) piece of machinery.

Today's modern airplanes can be compared to a flying fortress, factory or retail store. They consist of multiple complex systems that must work seamlessly, and continuously, to produce value. Keeping airplanes flying is hard work. However, it's the word "flying" that makes airplane maintenance more complex than a factory or retail store.

Just like a large factory, airplanes need to be serviced and replenished so that they can keep generating revenue. For that, ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems exist: managing inventory, resources, planning and scheduling. In simple words, the ERP determines "who does what, when, and where?" Unfortunately, the technical documentation provided by manufacturers, which describes "how" to fix the airplanes, is not built to support modern airlines and their ERP systems. Using the B-17 analogy, it seems that OEMs care less about the "flying" and more about the "fortress."

The OEM maintenance applications are built like a fortress, or a prison, designed to protect those critical user manuals. Boeing and Airbus assume that airline customers are willing to work inside their private little dungeons. In fact, even the very latest "tool box" by Boeing is a closed application that's difficult to break into, and even harder to break out of.

The problem is that most airlines have a diverse aircraft fleet including Airbus, Boeing and other brands. Airlines need a single maintenance system to manage them all, rather than a separate maintenance application for each fleet.  Further complicating the situation, airlines use the OEM documentation as "reference only" with best practices constantly being written and implemented by the engineering department.

The reality is that each airline has different maintenance practices that reflect their own needs, and every airplane in their fleet is handled differently—different missions, different options, different repair history, different configuration.  Airlines need to load the OEM information into their own ERP systems to manage inventory and maintenance processes across locations—including those provided by 3^rd party MROs. 

Outsiders may find it surprising to learn that airlines have better maintenance knowledge than the OEMs. Airline maintenance plans are based on the real-world experience of daily operations, as well as the heavy responsibility of ensuring passenger safety. Airlines need an easy way to connect or import OEM maintenance information to the ERP system so that they can quickly implement an "as maintained" view of maintenance requirements that augments the OEM data.

Unfortunately, the document fortresses built by Boeing and Airbus don't make this easy to do. Whether this stems from poor programming or is done as a way to force airlines to use OEM parts, the fact is that the data required for airlines' ERP systems is not readily available. As a result, it costs airlines a fortune (in money and time) to load maintenance data into their ERP systems, which creates a fragmented maintenance information system.

The ATA spec that governs the presentation of maintenance information covers most of the data needs for ERP integration. It's the ability to actually implement the OEM data according to these specs, and make it portable, that is the issue.

In future posts, I will discuss issues pertaining to ERP-based aircraft maintenance and how it is supported, or not, by the OEM documentation. We will cover maintenance requirements, maintenance tasks and equipment lists, forecasting and inventory management, as well as the lack of alternates (AIG) information, which is critical to the master parts list and drives every aspect of the ERP. Airlines need all of these processes to be based on "as maintained" practices, reliability, cost and distribution across multiple locations.

Maintaining a plane is a non-stop operation—around the clock and around the world. Unlike the B-17, the new "flying fortress" built by the OEMs is not a defender of liberty and freedom, it is a prison for maintenance information. In today's world, the complexity of airline operations cannot survive under such constraints.

According to Henry Canaday, writing in AviationWeek (MROs Race to Speed TAT), "The most important factors in an airline's selection of an airframe maintenance firm typically are quality, turnaround time (TAT) and price, in that order. Airlines usually rank TAT ahead of price because it can cost $10,000 a day to lease a narrowbody for each day of planned TAT, and several times that for a widebody, according to maintenance consultants at Oliver Wyman. Unplanned TAT delays cost even more in revenue losses."

This supports what Enigma has been saying for years, regardless of your industry when it comes to maximizing uptime and minimizing costs, maintenance quality and speed is critical. It's almost embarrassing to write something so obvious; however, what isn't so obvious is one of the key factors for improving quality and speed of service.

Maintenance consistency is a major driver for both quality and speed. In fact, lean six-sigma (LSS) shows that increasing maintenance consistency has a bigger impact on service cost than reducing mean-time-to-repair (MTTR). (You can look here and here for why that is.) In other words, when looking at the big picture, MTTR shouldn't be your primary concern.

Since quality and speed are not mutually exclusive, achieving both should be the goal—and service consistency drives both. Because Enigma's technology focuses on efficiency and consistency, we have been helping companies provide better, faster maintenance for years serving: airlines, MROs, automotive and industrial manufacturers and their dealers, rail and transit, and others.

Canaday writes, "KLM Engineering & Maintenance now leads the EU market in TAT for the 747-400, according to VP Base Maintenance Karel Bockstael. ‘We have to, to compete with Asia on labor cost.' D-check TAT on 747-400s [a complex maintenance event] can be as brief as four weeks, or 3.5 weeks without exterior painting. This represents a 30% reduction in five years through Lean and Six Sigma, identification of critical paths and other improvements, with no increase in manpower."

Interestingly, KLM went live with Enigma about five years ago. While we can't take credit for all of the savings—that would be unfair to KLM Engineering & Maintenance—Enigma's technology has contributed to their success. 

At the dawn of this new decade, perhaps it's time for a fresh look at how your company supports and services equipment. When it comes to succeeding in the aftermarket, Enigma has the technology and the experience to help you fix it right and fix it fast.

Mr. Rashidi Saidin, Malaysian Airlines (left) and Mr. Takashi Sasaki, Japan Airlines

AviationWeek held their annual MRO Asia show last week in Hong Kong. Enigma's CEO, Jonathan Yaron, moderated one of the sessions: "IT Considerations in a Modern MRO Facility". The panel included representatives from two airlines - Japan Airlines (JAL) and Malaysian Airlines (MAS) - and from one MRO shop - Boeing Shanghai Aviation Services.

Mr. Takashi Sasaki, Staff Director at JAL Engineering & Maintenance, spoke about the implementation of Enigma and SAP at JAL and how the airline is now starting to reap the benefits of these new IT systems. The Enigma implementation at JAL went live in mid-2008, enabling thousands of engineers, inspectors and mechanics 24-hour access to the most up-to-date technical documentation. Mr. Sasaki stressed the seamless integration between the Enigma system and JAL's Engineering Workflow System (based on Documentum), enabling fast and efficient review of technical manual revisions from Boeing and the fast publishing of JAL Customer Original Changes (COCs) into these manuals.

Mr. Rashidi Saidin, General Manager of Engineering & Maintenance at MAS, outlined the considerations of implementing advanced IT systems in MRO from the perspective of an airline that is still using old legacy systems. He spoke of the troubles arising from the current setup: too many systems that are not integrated properly and contain inaccurate and out-of-date data. Significantly, Mr. Rashidi noted that engineers and mechanics waste 60% of their time searching for information about the appropriate part or maintenance task.

Mr. Bernard Hensey, CEO of Boeing Shanghai Aviation Services, spoke about the need to utilize generic IT systems in an MRO environment, implementing lean projects that avoid a footprint that is too wide. He urged airlines and MROs to "take a serious look" at the IT systems offered by the OEMs (i.e., Boeing and Airbus) when evaluating a new system.

What Mr. Hensey neglected to mention is that most major airlines have either already moved away from OEM-provided technical documentation systems or are seriously considering doing so, in favor of implementing a "best of breed" solution. Indeed, what may be a good system for a small airline operating a Boeing-only or Airbus-only fleet, does not work for an airline operating a diverse fleet from various OEMs. This is especially true when the airline also wants to benefit from integrating the technical documentation to the planning system and produce dynamic job cards.

Generally speaking, and in line with the times, fewer companies attended this year's show. It also seemed like the delegate attendance at the conference sessions was markedly lower. Last year, after the MRO Asia show in Singapore, I wrote that most speakers expressed uncertainty about the future and warned to expect bad times. This year, there was no uncertainty; everyone spoke about how they were licking the wounds from 2009 and expressed hope for better times ahead. The fact that some vendors did not even show up at this show (see pictures below) is an indication of how deep and painful these wounds are.

Empty booths at MRO Asia 2009

A Volvo service technician uses the Volvo VIDA application in a dealership service bay.

As customers start returning to automotive showrooms, they seem to be avoiding service departments. According to NADA figures (as reported by Richard Truett in the November 2, 2009 issue of Automotive News), parts and service revenues at dealerships are dropping. There are a number of reasons for this: fewer new car sales and increased quality means less warranty work; higher parts and service costs (at most dealers) drive customers into independent repair facilities (IRF); improved consumables like engine belts, hoses and spark plugs tend to last longer; modular design practices that promote component exchange makes it faster/cheaper to replace items than to repair them. These and other trends have caused parts and service revenues to drop more than $3B, from 2005 to 2008, at new car dealerships.

I bring this up as another cause of concern for OEMs. (As if they need another worry.) Success or failure for dealership channels relies, in large part, on a healthy parts and service business. However, trying to increase service revenue by decreasing product quality really isn't an option-regardless of the practice of planned obsolescence. Today's customers demand high quality, therefore the question for OEMs is how to restore their dealer's profit centers-parts and service-without adversely impacting product quality and customer satisfaction.

The answer may lie in the complexity of modern automobiles. Dealers are uniquely qualified to service and support the deep-and rapidly changing-technology that is now standard on even inexpensive cars. Truett quotes John Baumgardner, service director at Orange Buick-GMC in Orlando, FL as saying, "'Diagnosing the problem is now more complex than doing the repair work.'" After describing how vehicles have up to 15 programmable modules, Laura Terzs, Ford's manager of diagnostic service products, states that, "'The trend now is to reprogram the modules rather than replace...So we release a software fix to the dealer vs. replacement.'" This suggests that OEMs must provide dealers with advanced diagnostics and software capabilities to ensure they have a service and parts advantage over independent competitors.

Truett writes, "Automakers are acutely aware that high satisfaction scores are a key way to retain customers, so they want to make service department visits infrequent and fast." That may sound as if the goals of OEMs are at odds with the goals of dealers-as they try to increase service revenue-but the reality is different. While it's true that OEMs are trying to reduce the amount (and cost) of service needed by any one vehicle, their focus on maintenance efficiency can give dealers the ability to increase the number of vehicles they service. If successful, the effect would be to switch the revenue equation from servicing fewer vehicles more frequently, to servicing more vehicles less frequently. And more vehicles being serviced typically results in greater parts and service revenue. Ultimately this is a battle for market share and as vehicles get more complex, smart OEMs can give their dealer channel a competitive advantage.

One OEM that has done this successfully is Volvo. Using Enigma technology, the Volvo diagnostics system deployed at most of their dealers has dramatically reduced service times; to the point where each service bay can now repair one additional car per day. If a dealership has eight service bays, that's 8 more cars each day-48 cars each week and almost 2500 cars each year-that can now be serviced by the dealer, without ever expanding their service department. That additional volume gives dealers the flexibility needed to get creative, finding new ways to improve customer service and brand loyalty.

Enigma improves maintenance and repair productivity-it's a one-stop-shop for all service and parts information. Providing technicians and parts managers with the information they need, instantly and accurately, is the first step to ensuring service visits are successful and fast. Helping OEMs find ways to improve dealer service and support is not a simple problem to solve, but it's what we do. As one of our customers said, "Enigma is the aftermarket expert."