CASE STUDY: The digitalization of MRO services at GAES

Author: Dmytro Neschetnyi, Director of IT, GAES, Adeliia Platonova - Sr Manager Business Systems & Digital Solutions, GAES, Ege Sumerol, Director of Operations, WINGS Software Vendor (ADT)

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Dmytro Neschetnyi – Director of IT and Adeliia Platonova, Sr Manager Business Systems & Digital Solutions, both at GAES, with Ege Sumerol – Director of Operations, WINGS Software Vendor (ADT) share the journey from inception to integration to mobility.

Dmytro Neschetnyi

I’ve seen a lot of changes over my years in the MRO business but the big change in recent years, arguably the biggest change of all, has been the arrival of AI (Artificial Intelligence). Many companies are working with AI and, when making the first draft of my contribution to this article, I wanted to make it stylish; so, I used ChatGPT, as many of us do today. The result was pretty much perfect but I’m human and not perfect, so, I’ve re-written this copy myself without ChatGPT, because I don’t want to be just a talking head for something that was prepared elsewhere. No doubt, the future will be with AI, a human future with AI, or maybe an AI future will be with humans. But today, AI has a place in the system and many solution providers attach AI functionality to their MRO systems.

GULF AIRCRAFT & ENGINEERING SERVICES (GAES)

A few words about our company. It is a new business, but the people in it all have many years of MRO experience in the UAE. Our IT department personnel have up to 15 years’ experience in the MRO industry including implementing digital processes. MRO today is based on rules and compliance; also, compared to other businesses, it is slower to adopt any new features to the process because, as a regulated industry, we always have to consider how the regulations work with any new information systems.

TRANSFORMING GAES TO AN IT-DRIVEN FUTURE

Up until 2024, the role of IT in our company was the same as that role in any company. Before the MRO company, there was a support function; supporting the business and systems. Because it’s really difficult to make people from the floor, the engineers, to be the drivers for change, in 2024, our company decided to make IT the driver for future changes in the company; not only a supporting role, but the driver of changes, as set-out in figure 1.

Figure 1

We now have three strategic directions. The first is to transfer process management to digital. Second is information security because of new regulation for EASA, coming in 2026: we are now preparing our company for ISO 27001 certification to ensure cybersecurity readiness as in figure 2.

Figure 2

And third, we are going to green technologies; although it is not part of the general business, management has decided that IT is preparing, together with our facility, to undertake and implement a new project. It is a solar charging station for our electric vehicles, using knowhow from the Netherlands – see figure 3.

Figure 3

In our region, we have cheap electric energy but we also have the problem of a huge amount of dust in the air. Our solar power station is completely separate from the grid and we have a special AI system connected to our weather station. Our smart robot, using the data from the weather station, the condition of the air and the level of electricity being generated by the station will start working to clean the solar panels when necessary. The same station can also provide an additional backup power solution for the IT infrastructure. This is what the project has already done for the IT department and facility department. But that was not the only reason for the project: it was also to demonstrate to our staff that we are going green but that, even in our region, we must be ahead of other MRO companies. And we’re definitely going to green technology because it’s only way to go for the future.

With the transformation of process management to digital, with information security and with green technology, our strategy is clear: to transform the company from an MRO to a digital MRO. Our next target is to become a smart MRO with a smart hangar and a smart store. This it is not just a plan; we have already started.

Adeliia Platonova

In today’s technology landscape, every company is racing towards getting fast and predictive solutions but let us not forget one very important, fundamental truth, which is that before we run, we need to walk. Before we automate anything, we need first to structure it, as shown in figure 4.

Figure 4

This is a digital transformation process; it’s not just a switch. That’s why it is important to first structure your data and transfer the processes from the manual to the system-based operation: then, the next step is to optimize it, find the bottlenecks and try to refine the processes ready for the next stage of automation. There, you are enhancing the speed and trying to cut the routine operations. I firmly believe that AI should only be introduced after that as a final layer, where you are trying to add some intelligence and to make the change to a digital future. As a company GAES has been following this path for quite some time. For us, the core platform, is our WINGS system. It’s not just a system; for us, it’s an ecosystem, because it connects everything. It captures all the information, and everything works together as in figure 5.

Figure 5

The software solution that we selected for this was WINGS from ADT. WINGS captures our daily end to end preparation; starting from the sales and contract reviews to the planning and work pack preparation from the HR and inventory and procurement processes, and then, ultimately, from the maintenance operations to the financing and invoicing; it’s all in one system. These are not the only modules that the system captures. There is much more, and we are using it for our daily operations. We are also trying to expand it and are adding additional supporting operations, and that’s why I’m really excited that we are trying to implement new things, and that we have a great support from our software vendor. I want to share with readers a few of our actions at GAES along with some of the benefits that we have gained.

The first example, is the introduction of a full integration between our finance system and WINGS which you can see in figure 6.

Figure 6

While WINGS has some financing functions such as invoicing and billing, it doesn’t include a full accounting process or financial analysis. That’s why we had it in a separate system and, before that, we had the functions isolated from each other with a manual process between them. Two technicians did all of the manual transfers of the inventory data to the finance system. To eliminate this inefficiency, we have created a live integration with the help of both developer teams, and now we have the flow, the transition of all the materials and all the data and labor collections from the ERP to finance. We have eliminated unnecessary work, and it was a big game changer for us.

Another example is introducing the real time attendance tracker seen in figure 7.

Figure 7

We collect check-in and check-out times from the facility for technicians and staff by our attendance tracking machine using biometrics. Before, there was only one daily transfer of this data to the ERP which meant that we were lacking visibility and information. Now, we have the real-time information, whenever we want, about employee attendance in the facility. This enables smarter planning and allows us to see the availability of resources. And we are also planning to shift into the biometrics for the labor collection. This is our next planned step, because we believe that specifically biometrics are the most accurate way to collect the information.

Another major accomplishment is that we have created a completely new model of HR inside of our ERP system which is illustrated in figure 8.

Figure 8

Before that, we had a separate HR system, and it was a big challenge for us to operate both systems at the same time. It includes a lot of data entries with a lot of routine work that is necessary to collect in both systems. We could have done that with integration help, but we decided to build a complete and comprehensive module inside the Wings ERP and our vendor supported us in that. The initial idea was to combine the production processes with the HR process, because we aim to have a better resource availability for planning, and we could do this. It wasn’t easy: first we precisely defined requirements, then we developed and tested. Finally, we got to a result that works and we now have our system, which has full onboarding. We have employee profiles and employee schedules as well as leave management and balance tracking, as seen in figure 9.

Figure 9

It all gives a better insight for the company, and gives employees a better insight. Technicians now have a separate self-service screen, which is inside their main ERP system module and which they can access at any time. Together with the work tasks and assignments that they view in their system access, they have their key employment information: their employee profile, salary changes, employee documentation, requests, their leave management and balances, especially their overtime. It’s information that they always request from us. Now, they have full control of that which gives them more individual empowerment and it’s something that they really like having in their own hands. It also gives a great view for management because they can see everything in the system under the single-entry point with the possibility of all of their operations. This integrity is critical which is why I stated earlier that WINGS is not just our software system; it is our ecosystem. It enables us to combine all of these data in one place. That’s the real benefit and value when your processes are combined into a single source.

I’m really excited about mobile operations, the next steps for our improvement and our future. We’re planning to shift to the mobile application usage process because currently our technicians are using stationary kiosks located in portacabins – see figure 10.

Figure 10

They come there to get technical documentation but it’s time consuming and inefficient. That’s why we decided to streamline this process and we’re running pilot projects with a selection of three devices; a standard tablet, a mini tablet and a smartphone, as illustrated in figure 11.

Figure 11

And the use case for that is to understand the visibility, understand the missing features, and to analyze what is the best fit size of device. There are different opinions about that, and I believe that this specific step will be the first step on the road for a more digital, more efficient future, which I’m really excited for.

As a tech enthusiast, I believe in technology and in embracing it towards making operations more simple and more effective, and to help people to do their work better and make it easier for them. This is what will enable us to offer a better product, to focus on delivering more value to customers, and to eliminate some unnecessary manual steps and allow technology to do it for us.

The next step for the company, after going mobile, will be to prepare our team for paperless execution. It cannot be fully paperless from the start which is why we are planning for a hybrid solution at first. For this, we have our partners from WINGS software to help us and we have just started this step.

Ege Sumerol

Successful projects are the results of determining the correct objectives, teamwork, commitments and planning, and I can easily say that we have achieved all that as a team with ADT and GAES partnership. We actually initiated the paperless project back in 2018, there were challenges that that we encountered which we’ve set out in figure 12.

Figure 12

One challenge was to process OEM documentation. When we talk about a full paperless solution, we want the teams working in the field to be able to access all electronic documents, all manuals, all the documents that are needed for maintenance and to be able to process and manage the digital sign-off. We came up with a dynamic, configurable environment platform where you can pre-configure, for each OEM document type, and the system will recognize the structure of the document and processes. You only have to perform this configuration once for each manufacturer in each document type.

The second challenge is, of course, aviation standards. The solution would have to be compliant with civil aviation requirements, and the infrastructure was originally designed around these requirements and regulations.

The next challenge was system security now that we have seen that every industry has seen a rise in the use of digital process management, and one of the concerns that comes along with it is cybersecurity. Infrastructure and system security have to meet these requirements. It’s an ongoing task because cybersecurity is evolving every day; the requirements are changing, and you would have to meet all these requirements.

The last challenge and one of the most important is system performance. You can’t have users working on the field if they have to wait to access data or OEM documents in order to fulfill their job. We did our best to make sure that the speed and the performance of the system is satisfactory.

People often ask, ‘why go paperless?’ We hear that a lot with digital transformation of systems. Figure 13 offers a few reasons.

Figure 13

Paperless increases collaboration. Different teams and different business units that should be able to work in the same environment share documents, information, exchange data and manage their workflow processes, which eventually will improve the productivity and efficiency of the business. Also, complete digital transformation is becoming mandatory; we are in the digital era. Information is no longer stored on paper, and digital information tracking, managing, processing has become a part of our lives. Efficient management is also a part of this. Digital information management offers advantages of speed, organizing your data and being able to communicate more thoroughly and in a much more effective way with different team members. Last of all, there are the environmental impacts, it’s a ‘Go-Green’ era, and the reduction of paper use is essential, a responsibility that we all have to take seriously.

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE FOR WINGS

What is next from our perspective. Figure 14 shows our roadmap.

Figure 14

Although AI is being discussed by everyone, we don’t want to integrate it only for the sake of claiming to have it.; we want it to improve the business and have a positive effect on management. Right now, we see two opportunities. One of them is predictive maintenance. Predictive maintenance is a hot topic which we take seriously and have been working on it for a year with a dedicated group of software and aircraft engineers. Currently in the second phase of the project, the proof of concept, we have selected three aircraft types for starters and tried to come up with a pattern. We’re also processing ACARS data, trying to detect information so that AI would be able to make maintenance and failure forecasts, which is our objective.

The next opportunity that we see is AI driven, context-based UI; AI could assist users to determine next actions and their routines. Another approach that we’re interested in is in artificial augmented reality where we believe that there’s still some room for improvement, but not technical. It’s more of an ergonomic challenge, along with AI driven context-based UI, we’re planning to introduce gesture recognition, specifically for users working on the field.

There is a lot going on in this space and we hope that sharing our experience will be of use to readers who, like us, are navigating these changes and developments.