TheRoyal Air Forcehas saved £300m after
aerospace manufacturerBAE Systemsinstalled a web-based
enterprise resource planning system to speed the maintenance of
Tornado aircraft at RAF Marham in Norfolk.
The
ERP system has cut the inventory of spare parts the RAF base
holds, halved maintenance man-hours, and enabled 85% of spare parts
to be available within one hour, BAE Systems said last week.
Within the next two years, BAE Systems plans to extend the
eCapability system as a model for supporting other aircraft, Royal
Navy vessels and British Army armoured fighting vehicles.
Martin Garner, eCapability product manager at BAE Systems, said
there was a growing trend towards running maintenance on military
sites in partnership with the armed forces.
"The challenge is deploying an ERP application in an environment
that already has highly joined-up IT systems. These systems have to
interact with staff in-house and outside with suppliers," he
said.
The
Ministry of Defence awarded BAE Systems the £947m, 10-year ERP
contract in December 2006. The system went live at the beginning of
2007.
BAE Systems tailored IFS Applications 2001 and 2004 software to
run using a web interface. The system enables RAF and BAE staff to
review orders, check maintenance schedules and demand forecasts
across several databases.
BAE Systems developed bespoke security systems to manage
transactions. It also incorporated a business intelligence
component from Cognos software for reporting performance.
Simon Hunt, project director at BAE Systems, said the
eCapability system was delivering the predicted benefits, but the
integration of the technology with the RAF's business processes had
been challenging. This required BAE Systems to consult extensively
with users to ensure the system would deliver benefits.
"The business and the IS are an integrated capability, the
benefit cannot be achieved without one or the other," said
Hunt.