Air Evac's Decade-old Growth Journey

ENHANCEMENT OF INVENTORY MANAGEMENT

Air Evac finds this useful because it helps decrease turn time which leads to an increased number of turns while reducing the inventory for LRUs (line replaceable units). When an aircraft is out for maintenance, as soon as the maintenance controller removes a part that is automatically transferred to Air Evac’s ‘unserviceable’ warehouse until the next morning when the repair people come in and pull the reports that show them everything that was on the aircraft’s maintenance form – every discrepancy, every component removal. They then see what parts are available at the RMOs (Regional Maintenance Offices) to be sent back. Those parts used to sit there for two to three weeks while Air Evac was waiting for paperwork to be submitted from the RMOs to say what parts had been removed. Now, it’s an automatic function, it’s seen the next morning and a repair order can be raised and emailed to the RMO so that the parts can be shipped out that same day, which gets them to the repair facility for their overhauls with faster inspections before being returned to Air Evac and put back in the system. That has reduced the number of major components that have to be held in stock because the circulation of parts through the repair system is so much faster to get the stock back in, which has reduced the number of line replaceable units that Air Evac needs to keep in stock

FACILITY OBJECTS

Up until about a year ago, Air Evac was manually tracking all calibrated tools held in the field which made it difficult to keep up with what was out there and when they were due back in for yearly calibration. In our new system is a capability called ‘Facility Objects’ which allows users to track all of their tools and helmets because they have a 12-month inspection that is required. All of those are tracked through the system which gives the user visibility across the company of what is held at each location. Each location has its own warehouse for its tools and its helmets. So, at any time, across the company, it’s possible to see what is held at each warehouse, when it’s due and how many haven’t been completed. That has allowed us to cut down on miscalibration, we no longer have the FAA coming in and pointing out that we have a tool out of calibration. Air Evac knows a month or so ahead of the time for recalibration and notifies the bases to make sure that their tools are in as well as sends them a new one before the old one has to go out. This has made tool management so much easier

There’s also a facility called ‘Objects Due Report’ that can be pulled up: Air Evac does that about one month ahead of time for the tools to notify everybody of what is coming due when it’s due and where it needs to go. This same report will be pulled every month for helmets so the mechanics can coordinate with the pilots and crew members to get the helmet inspections done on time.

Another pain point was records storage and the new solution provides the ability to electronically store records. This has allowed Air Evac more visibility anywhere in the company, at any location to see records. Mechanics now have the ability to go into the system and find things that they need. Because Air Evac is across 15 states, it’s not as if they can just go down to the records room and see what there is. They can go into the system and open aircraft maintenance records, component records, repair orders, quotes, and goods receipts… any paper records are put into the system so that users no longer have to go to the filing cabinet and dig back through as much as two or three years of paperwork to find parts.

That’s being used for the facility objects: we upload every calibration paper that’s returned on a calibrated tool; we also upload every helmet inspection form. A recent implementation has been the employee training information in the HMRS section of Ramco (the employee information section), for every mechanic and pilot Air Evac has their licenses uploaded, details of any factory training they have received, their IAs (Inspection Authorizations) are uploaded and their A&Ps (Airframe and Powerplant) are uploaded so management has access to all their licenses with one click: it’s possible to call up a report with license information and everything needed on mechanics and pilots. This has taken away a lot of paperwork such as with component records: every time a component comes in, we upload every piece of paperwork for each individual component so we can go back to the last overhaul and have that information to hand

MULTIPLE OPERATING UNITS

As we’ve already mentioned above, Air Evac Lifeteam is part of the larger AirMedical Holdings Group, AMG Edge with other group entities including Med-Trans, EagleMed, and Reach Air Medical Services with a group total of nearly 300 aircraft. The whole group has one software package and one installation that can be modeled in each use case to serve multiple entities. In this group, the different entities work pretty much independently from an operating model perspective. So, modeling is a single installation using the concept of organizational units with the nuances for each of these entities retained in that model; at the same time the whole business needs to be able to view across these entities for things like inventory information which can be provided across the group

Also, if the holding group wants to roll up the finance across these entities, that can be done to achieve visibility whilst still retaining the nuances of each entity. Plus there is a reduced cost of ownership for the software when installed across a group such as this. Furthermore, when any new companies are acquired, the solution can be scaled horizontally and vertically to accommodate that additional entity

One case where this has proved useful is where there might be an aircraft out of service or needing a major part. Group operating units can share views across all four companies and look at their stock of parts and components. Instead of simply going out and spending thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on a major part, operating units can see what stock their sister companies hold and work together to make exchanges which has proved a big cost saver.

TECHNICAL RECORDS TRACKING

When a part comes in from repair, the first person to deal with it will be someone in inventory; so, as they bring it in, they look at the 8130s, check the times on the part when they come in, and what maintenance programs it related to. But, before they release that part to the fleet they put it in ‘pending status’. The system then sends an email to the records department which conducts a deep dive on that part, double-checking the 8130 and the component maintenance program to make sure everything is running correctly, that the times look right, and that nothing has been missed. They’ll then upload all the records. When Records says that everything is good, the record is verified, and only then is the part or component released to the fleet. That function alone has saved group businesses a lot of downtimes. Before this was started, parts would be brought in because inventory people didn’t always know what they were looking for: we would go to put a part on and there wouldn’t be the correct paperwork or something would be missing or the part number would be wrong. So then we had to spend hours digging and searching in order to get the aircraft back into service. This new solution has allowed us to make sure that the parts we need are up and ready before it ever reaches the aircraft – a real-time saver.

MAINTENANCE COST REDUCTION

The enhanced maintenance forecasting with improved inventory tracking is where the Aircraft Status: Time Remaining report comes in. Our RMM’s (Regional Maintenance Managers) run this which allows them to see what’s coming due on that aircraft which, in turn, has allowed Air Evac to calculate the exact time to bring those aircraft in for their big maintenance event, at 300 hours. It has also helped Air Evac to use timed parts a lot closer to their full life limit by running this report because it tells us how much the aircraft is flying and what its utilization time is. All that information can be used to work out; how long the aircraft has been flying and how much time is left on the part. If the aircraft is flying this many days a week, the maintenance planners know exactly when to bring it in and Air Evac is not losing as much time on the part as used to be the case which is also a big money saver.

DIGITAL SIGNATURES

One key part of this is the digital signature which has already been tested at Air Evac where we are now in the final stages of implementing it. The system will use dual authentication to meet regulatory requirements. Ramco has worked with Air Evac on this to meet their very specific FAA requirements. The screen is what the mechanic would see the first time they use a digital signature.

The digital signature will be set up for the mechanics when they are brought into the system. As soon as they complete their next task, they’ll see this screen for the first time where they’ll put in their password before creating a new one and confirming it. They’ll then sign the task off with their employee number, their A&P license, and a date. The reason that’s important is that at Air Evac’s RMOs there are thirty or so mechanics at one time. There might be five or six mechanics working on one aircraft. The FAA wants to know which mechanic did which task. Prior to digital signatures, the mechanics would manually sign off the tasks they completed on a printed-out work order before scanning or manually uploading them. They will now add all employees that worked on a task in the Execution Comments in Ramco and one mechanic from the group will sign it off electronically in the system. This is going to eliminate the manual work order paperwork which will be a big time saver for the mechanics

The other thing that digital signatures facilitate is that, if the inspector determines that the job needs to be looked at again or doesn’t agree with the discrepancy as written out, as soon as he registers that decision, it wipes the signature off so that the mechanic has to re-sign the task after the revised or additional work has been completed. Then, once again, the inspector will go into the system to re-sign it. Once the inspector has signed it off, it’s completed as done and will also show the Inspector’s AMP number and his information just as it does the mechanic’s

MOBILE SOLUTIONS ANYWHERE

At the time of writing, Air Evac was in the process of going live with Mechanic Anywhere and Warehouse Anywhere to be tested in the month following with end-user training scheduled. Mechanic Anywhere will allow users out in the field to work on an aircraft even where it has been landed away from any base (say in a field) as if they were in the engineering hangar. All it will need is the iPad in the aircraft for the mechanic to be able to use the system as if he were back at base. Warehouse anywhere was scheduled for implementation at the same time and will also allow users to undertake inventory transactions on mobile devices. So they’ll be able to take their mobile phone to undertake cycle counts from the floor, or the transfer of a part from the floor and see exactly what they have on the shelf. Air Evac also wants to implement barcoding on parts so that mechanics can take their phones, scan the parts, and see how many of those parts are in their system or how many might be available from other systems and what other warehouses have that part.

Those are some of the things that we’ve recently implemented at Air Evac with digital signatures which had gone live in 2017 and in the future, we’re looking forward to getting rid of the paper logbooks on the aircraft to go wholly electronic with those through the system.