Live blog coverage from the IFS World Conference 2018 breakout session, “Introduction to IFS Maintenix: Solutions, customer base, roadmap.”
Session Speaker: Dan Dutton, AVP, Products
Maintenix is a product that’s been evolving for 20 years for the aviation and defense (A&D) markets, but it’s new to us. It came to us through acquisition.
We have 300 people globally dedicated to serving aviation and defense. We target a broad cross-section of the A&D business. But, with IFS Maintenix, we’re really focused on maintenance. We’re looking at the part of lifecycle after the plane rolls off the production line — and it’s a huge part of the asset’s lifecycle, complexity and cost.
IFS Maintenix is a product specifically designed for the aviation maintenance market. We’re using the same basic principles we use across the company:
- Software that people understand (and can use easily)
- Outcome-driven processes
- Fast, reliable and secure
But this industry, in particular, has some very specific needs. For example, we need rock-solid, real-time compliance for safety and legal reasons. We need to track parts and understand where they are in real-time because aircraft are truly mobile assets. And, we need integrated multi-horizon planning to support the long-term maintenance scheduling over the lifecycle of the aircraft from regent decisions to strategic ones.
We’re aiming to deliver a connected workforce during operations, with consistently great turnaround times to get the asset back in service.
IFS Maintenix is a best-of-breed product, that lives within an ecosystem. It’s designed to be the system that handles all your maintenance, but it still can interact with the rest of the customer’s organizational tools.
Earlier in the week, we launched IFS Maintenix Line Planner and IFS Maintenix Fleet Planner. We want to start offering more directed solutions for parts of the aviation business — and you don’t need IFS Maintenix to use them. We want to develop the ecosystem both ourselves and by working with partners.
IFS Maintenix Fleet Planner
This is a tool for making long-range plans to maximize aircraft availability. It’s not about creating a plan, it’s about quickly creating a bunch of plans and comparing the outcomes. It also needs to be able to change quickly, to adapt to the rapidly changing aviation needs of a company.
IFS Maintenix Line Planner
Another pure Software as a Service (SaaS) product, one that’s designed to increase line efficiency. It’s a tool for creating, maintaining and communicating a line maintenance plan, one that is adaptive to circumstance on the ground — and which maximizes the output of mechanics.
There’s more than those two. For example, the Production Planning & Control module gives absolute visibility of everything that is happening on an aircraft maintenance visit. Customers like BAE are finding substantial returns on this product.
We work with some of the best and largest aviation and defense companies in the world. We’re proud of that. For example, Qantas fundamentally changed the way they did maintenance when they rolled out our products, moving from a paper system to a digital one. The rollout of IFS Maintenix made a huge difference to the business.
BAE Systems use IFS Maintenix when they sell a support contract alongside a new aircraft. It gives them visibility of all they need to do to drive down the costs or providing that maintenance.
Learn more about IFS Maintenix at ifs.com.
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