Aviation

Tech Trends
to watch for in

2016

Top 5 Aviation Tech Trends to watch for in 2016 | 1

Top 5 Aviation Tech Trends for in 2016

Looking beyond drones, paperless ops and mobility
Dr. Franz Josef Weiper and R.H. Chalapathy, Ramco Systems

Although revenue forecast for the aviation MRO industry is strong, with fuel prices going down, older aircraft staying in service
coupled with new aircraft and engines entering service., there is enough volatility in the market due to OEM competition,
market consolidation and crunch in labor market to make 2016 a very interesting year for Airlines and MROs.
The trends below is based on insights gained over active collaboration and interaction with various stakeholders in the
Aviation IT industry.

Trend 1:

connected ecosystem, which will benefit all the

players in the value chain from the OEMs to Marginal
operators.

Whether we like it or not, legacy systems and new age

IT solutions co-exist in the maintenance realm.
The same enthusiasm of upgrading to newer fleet
doesnt trickle down to the backbone infrastructure.
This inertia to resolve resides nowhere else but within
the minds of every end user who puts up with it. Its
like driving to office on a 1908 Ford Model T although
we are totally aware that its not fuel efficient,
comfortable, earth friendly, etc. As an operator or an
MRO scales up operations, they still put up with the
same legacy infrastructure, particularly the IT that
governs people, process and equipment.

Trend 2:

Inching towards Single source

of truth Consolidation of IT
systems will at last occur

What is the result?

Soon a threshold is reached, and the voids in
functionality, integration, data discrepancies surface
like icebergs in the Indian Ocean (never spotted
before). The MRO or the airline then sets up a
committee to review all available new age IT systems
that consumes anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 months.
A RFP is then floated and any response to it is further
debated by the team that sets out to solve the selfinflicted problems. WHY? Even though IT can sort the
problems out, the mindset of the people who end up
using it fails to change. In 2016, the problem arising
out of disparate legacy systems and point solutions
will peak forcing this mindset to change. Its simple,
when Google opened up Gmail to the world on Feb
7th 2007, a major chunk of the Yahoo mail and Hotmail
users refused to migrate even though 1GB of space
was promised. Consolidation of IT will result in a single
source of truth, weeding out all data silos to deliver
exceptional clarity of maintenance operations
Change begins with the mind.
The consolidation of IT will also move beyond
boundaries of individual enterprises and pave for a

Copyright 2015, Ramco Systems Limited.

Technology led Innovation

will finally percolate all the
way down to Shop floor

Innovation has been buzz word in articles, blogs,

media, and conference and more importantly in
board rooms for some time now. With growing
pressure on competition, margins and customer
engagement innovation strategy is a no-brainer and
in some cases only option for survival.
There is a statistic that says 86% of the board room
members are convinced that innovation should be
the corner stone of their strategy and interestingly
enough there is a another statistic that says only 1517% of those organization actually end up
implementing these innovations.
The resistance so far has been due to a variety of
reasons such as technology fluidity, change
management issues, ever evolving standards,
difficulty in business case articulation, internal
departmental hurdles, High investment, risk of failure
to name a few.
This year we will see a lot acceptance of the
innovation strategy and we will see a lot more
innovative solutions being rolled out at the hangar,
Line station, Airport Bays and warehouses etc. Some
of the lead indicators for this have been increasing
success rate of proof-of-concepts with IOT /
Wearables / Drones/ Mobility and some have reached
technology maturity led by more Co-Innovation
strategic partnerships to overcome internal hurdles,
investment burdens and failure risks.

ramco.com/aviation

Top 5 Aviation Tech Trends to watch for in 2016 | 2

Current Innovations are around the areas of Aircraft

Health Monitoring Systems, Predictive Maintenance
(with the help of Big Data, Machine Learning, Natural
Language Processing etc), Robotics, Resource
Optimization and adoption of wearable & mobility
solutions.
Additionally, we see people investing in areas like
Additive Manufacturing / 3D Printing, Augmented
Reality & Virtual Reality aiding Mechanics and
Technicians, UAVs, Composite Repair capabilities and
New Repair Technologies leveraging huge amount of
component performance and health data.

Trend 3:

Dirty finger prints will exist

A day in the life of mechanic or a storekeeper or a line

foreman involves more paper work than the mail man
who delivers your post. Lets assume no maintenance
work is carried out on an aircraft BUT, all the necessary
personnel sign off on all the work package or release
notes paperwork - The pilot will look for the signature
during his preflight check and take it to the runway for
takeoff although no such misuse of paperwork is
recorded in history, thus is the importance given to
maintenance documentation.

IT systems today influence the organizations to

go paperless without fully understanding the
user experience, regulatory and security aspects
of having maintenance documentation as dirty
finger prints.
The mechanics are still reluctant to technical
details on tablet simply because it neither easy or
nor faster in comparison to writing in on paper
and they spend more time on improving the
quality of repair rather than data entry.
Paperless is inevitable , till IT vendors make data
entry more faster and better, focus more than
automated data collection than data entry, the
dirty finger print will still remain.

Copyright 2015, Ramco Systems Limited.

Trend 4:

Unplugging will begin and the

move towards Zero UI

We started off on the World Wide Web back in the 80s

and 90s using clunky desktops and work stations. The
evolution of tech resulted in laptops which were still
heavy to carry around. Then came the smartphone
generation that resulted in most of our lives going
digital from sending emails, socializing, ordering a
pizza or buying a furniture - all accomplished from the
palm of our hand. It is a surprise then to notice end
users top down in the maintenance organizations
resort to 20 year old tech called the Workstation at the
hangar, warehouse or the office to run their work.
Need to search for a part? Mechanic has to walk the
entire 400 to 800 steps back and forth between the
line and the hangar to use the workstation to search
of part, documentation and new work orders.
Storekeeper wants to respond to a parts request? He
drops his stock taking routine in the far end zone of
the warehouse and walks back to the workstation in
the warehouse to check for part in the system and
then issues it. Supervisor assigning work packages to
mechanics? He raises it on his desktop and the
mechanic has to wait till he gets on the work station
to see what new work is assigned to him.
$3 - 3.5 Billion or 10% cost of all flight delays in 2014
were attributed to maintenance work.
Now imagine this: Supervisor at the MCC downloads
the pilots recorded discrepancies from an app,
creates the work order or package and pushes it to an
app in the mechanics smartphone. Mechanic
downloads the work package, searches for parts
required for the work on his smartphone which is
integrated to the entire M&E system including the
warehouse. The storekeepers smartphone pinpoints
which zone of the warehouse the part resides in for
him to pick and issue immediately. The line runner
delivers the part to the mechanic. The entire sequence
from raising a discrepancy to walking to the aircraft
with the right part, documentation and checklist all
done by a series of apps that talk to each other on the
smartphone, with little or no User specific Input

ramco.com/aviation

Top 5 Aviation Tech Trends to watch for in 2016 | 3

Trend 5:

Algorithmic planning will rule

Aviation maintenance planning has always been a

complex process given multitude of variables such as
maintenance
parameters,
flight
schedules,
operational constraints, safety regulations and
material/ resource requirements.
The complexity is not only on the one time
computation but on the impact of disruptions on the
overall planning. For e.g. Line stations run into 20
million disruptions per day as flight schedules
changes can drastically impact parts requirements,
ground staff roster schedule, ground support
equipment availability, operational plan.
The current processes and system are in no way
geared to handle this complexity and this is obvious

with airlines loosing 25 billion USD every year due to

delays.
Traditional systems run on linear programming and
they will no longer cut the ice due to its inefficiency in
computational time and ability to handle real time
disruption. On the other hand, the algorithmic
solution use new age algorithms and optimization
platform like multi-agent simulated annealing, Rprograming that provide ability to enable real time
with in memory planning option
Aviation industry especially the airlines realize this is
an area that will offer significant business benefits and
you will see a lot acceptance, evaluation/ proof- of
concepts happening with regards to algorithmic
planning especially in Line Maintenance and Hangar
Operations.

Worthy mentions that almost made it to the top 5

1.
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New age data visualization would become the norm

Cognitive Applications will find its ways
Virtual Reality /Augmented Reality is about to go mainstream
On-premise installation will still be preferred over Cloud deployment
Bi-directional data flow between OEM and Operators will become a standard
High investment in Self Service Business Intelligence and Big data analysis will occur

In summary, it will be a challenging year for Aviation MRO organizations with increased OEM competition, NewGen aircraft capability requirements, severe labor shortages and market consolidation. Organizations that can
adopt IP based service differentiation, embrace disruptive technology innovations and focus on operational
efficiencies will smoothly ride the wave of 2016.

About the Authors:

Dr. Franz Josef Weiper
Chief consultant, In-memory planning & optimization, Ramco Systems
Franz Josef is the key member of driving our iPO engine & optimization approach in Ramco. He comes with more than 15
years of experience in Development and Solution Architecture for Advanced Planning & Optimization Solutions in various
industry areas. In addition he currently holds a position as Professor of Logistics IT at the University of Applied Science,
Cologne.

R.H. Chalapathy B.E. M.B.A, CPIM, CIRM, PRINCE 2, PgMP

Global head of Strategy, Aviation practice, Ramco Systems

R.H. Chalapathy a.k.a Chala after successfully establishing the business consulting division in Asia pacific for manufacturing
and Aviation MRO Software industry segments for Ramco. Chala has implemented & consulted for projects across a variety
of industries as Airlines, Airports, Aviation MRO, Maritime, Manufacturing and Logistics.
Holding the world renowned APICS certification (CPIM/CIRM), PMI Certification (PgMP) and he is part of an exclusive club of
1000 certified professionals worldwide.

Copyright 2015, Ramco Systems Limited.

ramco.com/aviation