Challenge

The U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command relies on its contractors to provide timely maintenance and operations data for each of its aircraft. This information is critical to the Army's planning and maintenance protocols. The process for this delivery was paper/form driven and could take as long as 4 weeks. This created safety issues and the unnecessary disposal of expensive parts due to lack of up-to-date information. Additionally, feedback on the field use of the items is critical for the success of performance based maintenance logistics.

Solution

Modus21 implemented an interoperability mechanism to streamline the collection and sharing of aircraft maintenance data. Modus21 leveraged ISO modeling standards from PLCS and, in conjunction with its optimization methodology, was able to isolate the data, policies, people, systems, and delivery requirements for more efficient performance. Data abstraction, XML messaging, web services, Microsoft Biztalk, and data transformations were some of the products and technologies used in this effort.

Results

The client now has an extensible architecture that can scale to additional data sets or trading partners. The data delivery time between contractors and AMCOM has been reduced by 95%. The architecture has been extended to the Department of Defense's UID architecture and can be used for a host of different interoperability needs. To illustrate the value of this successful implementation, it is important to note that the Modus21's solution allowed the Army to complete the first, 100% correct aircraft documentation in the 20+ year history of the UH-60 program.