Wheels Up - The Weblog of Aircraft Data Fusion

Leverage your existing Technology

Leveraging your existing technology may provide just as much capability as adding new.

The definition used here for leveraging your existing technology; is to leverage existing technology investments by using add on's to extract more capability, functionality or efficiencies. In many cases adding peripherals or middleware applications can be used to create the functionality necessary to meet the new requirements. More or improved technology may not be the best value proposition.

Airline mergers, consolidation of system or process  and or the ever changing operations requirements may require more capabilty than can be currently provided. In many cases the current support systems were installed to address specific functionality or user requirements (point solution) and was  never fully integrated into the airlines operations support systems.

Each of these applications satisfied the specific needs at the time. Fast forward to today's operational environment and requirements. In the current environment there is a  need to integrate and achieve more efficiency and functionality in operations. Earlier technologies or applications are no longer able to meet the new requirements without some assistance.

When assessing either the addition of new technology (s) or adding functionality, vigilant business practices and processes must be used to evaluate and validate the costs and outcome of any initiative. Further, the appropriate data must be recorded and performance metrics defined to ensure the stated objectives were met.  

Aircraft Data Fusion's expertise and modeling tools used during the discovery and design phase of your project can facilitate the evaluation and decison making process. With more than 60 years of collective airline and busines experience the ADF team is well positioned to work with your team assess the costs and benefits of your technology initiative.    

Collaborating with Competitors

In "Sleeping with the Enemy", an article in the May issue of Industry Week, Doug Bartholomew refers to manufacturers in the auto industry who team up with competitors to cut costs and increase market share. The auto industry is finding that “sleeping with the enemy” offers pros that far outweigh the cons. According to the article, President of Timkin Corp.'s Industrial Group, Tom Arnold sees competitors who share costs on projects they could not handle on their own in the current environment, by collaborating we are able to increase our capability, while sharing the cost and the risk.

Sharing costs is the biggest reason companies may get together. Katie Lam, a spokesperson for Northrup Grumman says "There are a lot of different aerospace companies that we team with and that we also compete with." By sharing costs and pooling brain power companies can achieve even greater capabilities that benefit the customer at an affordable cost. More companies and vendors need to take this approach when looking to cut costs and creating efficiencies. The benefactors are both the companies and their customers.

In an industry where IT markets are relatively small, collaboration can play and even greater role in the profitability of those competing. For the same functionality there may be as many as six or more vendors competing for the same business with little, if any, differentiation. Collaboration can facilitate the development and use of state-of-the-art technologies to achieve even better solutions and enhance competitive advantage.

The role of a vendor or services provider is to assist the customer in increasing productivity, efficiency and achieving competitive advantage. Affordable and custom business solutions are essential to achieving this objective. Much of the core functionality required to achieve a business solution is generic. The technology costs for this core functionality can be shared by competitors reducing the costs of the solution to the customer and creating a healthier environment.

The changing world of IT in the airline industry

A recent article in Information Week regarding audits of industry IT departments underscores that not only are IT budgets declining as a percentage of revenue but there is less and less time available to analyze technologies and industry trends and how it may affect their business. Further due to budget limitations, the focus has become more on day-to-day operations. Nowhere is this truer than in the airline operations.

Corporate executives are becoming less dependent on internal analysis for their assessment of technologies or IT business solutions. Increasing pressure is being placed on vendors to offer business solutions with best of breed/class technologies and applications.

IT departments business processes are being transformed more into matching business solutions to corporate objectives. As stated by Ton Nealon, CIO of Southwest Airlines:

"Technology can help," Nealon says, "but if you're starting with a fundamentally flawed business model, it's not going to fix that." Fortunately for Southwest, its business model doesn't appear to need fixing. And the IT moves it's making now indicate the airline isn't waiting for that model to break.

The IT department will provide the oversight for contracting, implementation and support.. It is also becoming increasingly clear that the airlines operations IT functionality must be installed on a services oriented architecture (SOA) that creates a free flow of information between operations and the enterprise. The extreme pressure the airline industry is under to manage costs requires that every advantage be applied to streamlining operations that drives productivity and efficiencies.

The most successful airline operations of the future will be those that are able to apply cost effective business solutions to achieve maximum affordable productivity and efficiency to their operations.

Our blog and welcome to it!

Welcome to Wheels Up, the weblog of Aircraft Data Fusion. We'll be getting under way in just a few moments. In the meantime, let's review the current situation.

The airline industry is currently undergoing change at a rate unknown throughout its history. Those of us who have spent our lives in this industry have seen it coming, and have been personally impacted in one way or another.

As a former pilot for Northwest Airlines, I have spent a great deal of time on various technology initiatives, always with the intent of improving the information flow between the aircraft and the enterprise. Think about it - the aircraft is the only thing in the airline industry that really makes any money. Yet it's the one part of the business that is disconnected from the overall enterprise network. In any other industry, this would be unacceptable. But in this industry, it's the way we've operated since the beginning.

This must change. It will change. Market forces dictate that it will change. The ability for airlines to maintain viability will rest on their using every possible bit of business intelligence and bring them to in creating competitive advantage. Doing this impacts everything: safety, delays, maintenance, fuel utilization, and of course profitability.

I founded Aircraft Data Fusion to help the industry navigate this transformation. Over my 30-plus years as a pilot, I have developed and refined a set of notions of how to use technology to streamline operations. I'd like to share some of those ideas here on this blog. Others you will be able to experience first hand through our products and services.