Improved compliance for government manufacturing contracts and the aviation maintenance supply chain, along with forward and line maintenance mobility are at the heart of IFS Cloud 21R2
Following the successful release of IFS Cloud earlier this year, the biggest product release in IFS history, we’re now announcing new modules that bring significant Aerospace & Defense (A&D) functionality that are well worth focusing on.
IFS has for a long time held the top spot in the provision of aerospace & defense software. Research and advisory firm, ARC Advisory Group, has recognized IFS as the leading Enterprise Asset Management software vendor by market share, for the global A&D market for 10 straight years. In a recent Panorama Consulting Group report spotlighting the “2022 Top 10 ERP Systems” IFS was highlighted for its industry strength, particularly in A&D.
IFS Cloud 21R2 brings even more functionality to our market leading solution, all available through a range of deployment options. In particular, two key A&D markets—manufacturing and aviation maintenance—will benefit from new IFS Cloud functionality Here’s a deeper dive into the benefits for our customers.
A&D Manufacturing: Defense Contract Management gets a boost from IFS Cloud 21R2
With IFS Cloud we’re building on our already world-class capabilities to ensure we support compliance with government manufacturing contracts. With the size and importance of the U.S. market to global suppliers, we’ve focused our IFS Cloud A&D Manufacturing release on manufacturers that sell to the U.S. government—and the stats speak for themselves. According to the Aerospace Industries Association, the U.S. Aerospace & Defense market accounts for total industry revenues of $874 billion, which represents 18.8 percent of all non-food manufacturing revenue in the U.S.—in fact A&D accounts for nearly 2 percent of total U.S. GDP.
But all governments, not just the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), continuously strive to gather information and insights that lead to better decisions, often manifesting in contract requirements for A&D manufacturers, which, as a result, evolve over time. So, the applicability of the new features extends to other global manufacturing regions too.
Two core areas get a boost from new Defense Contract Management functionality within IFS Cloud 21R2:
- Defense Contract Reporting – If you’ve had dealings with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), you’ll be familiar with the Wide Area Workflow/iRAPT process—a secure web-based system used by the DoD for electronic submission of advance shipping data, invoicing, receipt, and acceptance, which allows DoD vendors to submit and track invoices and receipt/acceptance documents. IFS Cloud addresses this challenge by allowing integration to the WAWF/iRAPT Business Suite, which enables automatic WAWF data upload into government websites, thereby reducing manual labor and accelerating payments. Customers running IFS Cloud can easily record quality requirements at the supplier and parts levels, manage and audit quality programs, and track against those same requirements throughout the entire procurement process.
- Defense Supplier Management – The offerings in IFS Cloud 21R2 enable organizations to classify suppliers over a given period and surface this information during the procurement process. In addition, government contractors are able to calculate and set expenditure goals for those classifications. Then, once a project is underway, IFS Cloud provides a tool to periodically analyze progress against goals for organizations to report back in the government electronic subcontracting reporting system (eSRS).
In short, with this new functionality around planning support for fast-paced manufacturing, reduced complexity and enhanced accounting granularity, manufacturers can provide supplier classification tracking to meet ever-increasing government reporting standards—and ensure ongoing compliance with government manufacturing contracts.
IFS Cloud for Aviation Maintenance: Innovations for a changing industry
We’ve seen both commercial and defense operators facing work restrictions and social distancing requirements that have forced organizations to work differently than they have in the past.
The good news is that IFS Cloud 21R2 also brings important new capabilities to airlines & fleet operators, military air operators, and defense in-service-support providers for air assets.
On the airline side in particular, lockdowns and travel shutdowns have forced airline operators to maximize their organizational efficiency by doing more with less, whether that’s keeping the business operational with skeleton crews of staff, increasing aircraft availability, or extending the life of existing assets to the greatest extent possible. Most air fleet operators have had to make do with reduced workforces and frequently significantly reduced fleets as well.
With these aviation pressures in mind, as part of IFS Cloud 21R2, we spotlight two capabilities of our IFS Cloud for Aviation Maintenance solution that help our customers to be more effective and efficient.
- Aviation Technical Content Manager: Allowable Configuration tackles the age-old problem of configuration management – This feature interacts with the Configuration and Compliance Engine within the IFS Cloud for Aviation Maintenance solution to allow configuration specialists to view and modify the assembly configuration hierarchy based on changes from any form of change source. A change source could be any document or request that suggests a change to the hierarchy of an assembly, typically in OEM service literature, airworthiness directives, OEM IPC revision or configuration change requests. Increasing efficiency has been a priority over the course of the pandemic and this Allowable Configuration module provides exactly that kind of needed efficiency by granting the ability to definitively meet compliance requirements while helping streamline and automate the flow of information from the OEM to the aircraft operator.
- Mobile Forward and Line Maintenance – As mobile devices become more prevalent in increasingly paperless maintenance hangars, IFS has pioneered mobile-friendly solutions tailored for smart devices. With IFS Cloud, we’ve greatly enhanced our Mobile Forward and Line Maintenance capability, including line personnel being afforded an “offline mode” designed for mobile devices at the point of use. The Mobile Forward and Line Maintenance solution consists of a native mobile application and browser-based functionality to support technicians as they perform routine and non-routine work on an aircraft. Technicians can access a streamlined view of their maintenance workflows over their mobile devices during short offline periods. When combined with our future developments for ATCM Work Instructions, it will represent an enormous step change in line maintenance work execution: empowering technicians wherever they are performing maintenance, maximizing hands-on metal, and arming them with the information they need on the device they want.
The future of A&D software
The IFS Cloud 21R2 release tackles a wide array of challenges facing organizations in aviation maintenance and defense manufacturing. This latest version of IFS Cloud targets periphery obstacles, that are an impediment to core, value-based work. For defense manufacturing, this includes addressing the time consuming, redundant and error-prone manual entry processes when faced with reporting and compliance requirements. For aviation maintenance, the enhancements of IFS Cloud address labor intensive paper-based process and disparate information flows, allowing technicians to maximize their hands-on metal and arm them with the information they need, when and where they need it.
If you would like to learn more, these new features have been explored in full on-demand demonstration sessions that can be explored in more depth at the link below.
View full A&D demonstration sessions for IFS Cloud 21R2 on-demand here https://www.ifs.com/ifs-cloud/cloud-21r2/
Follow us on social media for the latest blog posts, industry and IFS news!
