Your Compliance System Needs Ames

Any aircraft maintenance planner worth their salt knows how critical meeting FAA maintenance requirements are to keeping a fleet in the air, customers safe, revenue flowing, and the government happy. Unfortunately, there are blind spots in current methods of aircraft maintenance planning—most notably, compliance systems can’t predict maintenance needs beyond its next check.To eliminate that weakness, we designed Ames, an advanced planning and scheduling tool, to seamlessly integrate with your compliance system and give you the smart tools needed to predict the future of your fleet maintenance plan and save your company hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of dollars in maintenance cost annually.

Compliance System Blind Spots

Aviation maintenance planning is a bit like professional juggling. You have to maintain compliance with regulatory and engineering mandates all the while administering a reliable maintenance planning & scheduling environment that keeps your fleet in the air (the juggling part). And what’s the end goal? To keep marketing, finance, the government, and operations (the audience and your wallet) happy.Unfortunately, in many cases, airlines are doing all of this work with one arm tied behind their back, because their compliance software system and planners can only see what’s immediately in front of them – a 737’s OEM maintenance routine and a plane’s next maintenance check – rather than what lies ahead in 12-36 months or even 5-15 years from now.
This blindspot, caused by the inherent rigidity of compliance systems, is what costs airlines millions of dollars each year by prioritizing maintenance (AKA overscheduling maintenance) over long term aircraft availability and profit.To better illustrate this point, below we’ve charted out the differences between using Ames + compliance software vs a compliance tool by itself.

Ames + Compliance Integration vs Standalone Compliance Planning + Spreadsheets

	Ames + Compliance Integration	Other Compliance + Planning Solutions
Software Format	Browser-based tools	Bulky software or spreadsheets
Compatibility	Integrates compliance data from systems like Trax, CAMP, Sceptre or any API (standard XML files)	Limited to data inputted OEM maintenance plans
Data Flexibility	Full verification: Can cross reference tables with Ames to map any differences between compliance systems and Ames	Miopic – Data from OEM’s maintenance program and spreadsheet schedule restricts the ability to extrapolate beyond what it knows
Data Automation	Can be manually uploaded or automated daily/weekly/etc.	Data is static or may be dependent on laborious manual spreadsheets
Ability to work with other tools	Integration with Ames allows for variable input and thus endless “What-If scenarios” and extrapolation of maintenance dates	Integration with other maintenance planning software leaves blindspots
Data Forecasting	Solves any aircraft maintenance problem followed by verification of OEM maintenance schedule	Can only analyze the data given with the restrictions of the maintenance plans/FAA compliance requirements
Maintenance Prediction	Can predict and plan up to 15-20 years	Can only see into the next available maintenance date
Problem-solving Speed	Immediate solutions or answers to your maintenance challenges	Days to weeks of planning manually only to get an answer that is immediately outdated
Software and Data independence	Ames is a black box independent from the compliance environment	Compliance tool is reliant on its siloed maintenance schedule data input

As you can see, Ames can supercharge your compliance software rather than replace it. By integrating the two systems, you can look beyond your next maintenance dates and extrapolate aircraft maintenance plans using endless variables or “What-if scenarios,” allowing for predictive planning for entire fleets of aircraft going out years.

Ames Plans Your Maintenance Future

Airlines often mistakenly believe that maintenance planning tools like Ames will force them to replace their current compliance system to function. But the truth is, our solution is not competition for your compliance software at all. In fact, your compliance system is critical to Ames’ functionality. Rather than work side-by-side on problem-solving, our solution works as an add-on to your compliance system to keep your compliance system siloed, allowing Ames to help launch your airline into the 21st century by quickly and efficiently planning your entire fleet’s future for the better with an unbiased approach to maintenance schedule prediction.But how?
It all starts with your fleet’s information.
With Ames, your airline can take in any variables available to effectively solve your maintenance planning and scheduling problems. For example, you can use our tool to intake the following information on a daily basis:

Aircraft requirement sign-offs
Current fleet time/cycle data
Staff requirements
Peak flying times (per marketing aircraft availability needs)
Aircraft parts deterioration over time
Takeoff and landing totals/cycles
Overall flight hours

Once Ames has taken in this data, it will analyze and spit out fleet maintenance schedules (even with assigned dollar values for multiple scenarios) for any number of months or years with results tailored to your airline’s specific goals. Finally, Ames will verify these solutions against the FAA-approved maintenance schedule loaded into your compliance system

Ames Integration with Compliance Systems

With the advent of systems like Ames, the age old maintenance planner’s creed, “Don’t impact the schedule,” is one that is going extinct. Rather than simply solving a fleet’s maintenance problem on an immediate, linear and short-sighted basis, Ames software can integrate with your compliance system to better solve the problem for the real, non-linear world.

Currently, airlines like Delta, United, Air Canada, British Airways, Southwest, and Qantas rely heavily on Ames to optimize their aircraft maintenance schedule and thanks to Ames’ integration have created a forecasted future in compliance with business rules and constraints to increase aircraft availability, keep on top of FAA regulations, and stay in the black. A full integration usually takes between 2-6 weeks and can be done through any cross-compatible API feed. Ames can also receive multiple feeds from different sources in different formats and process them automatically.The process to set up a data integration between an airline’s compliance system and Ames works as follows:

Omega works with your IT department to ensure that all steps of the process are clearly defined and executed
Omega sets up a dedicated server for your airline’s data (located anywhere in the world that you desire)
Omega defines the format of the feeds to airline’s IT department
Airline’s IT department prepares the feeds with the defined format
Airline’s IT department automatically uploads the feeds daily to the server
Omega automatically updates the Production Dataset with the feed files

Note: If Aircraft IDs, names of fleets, or requirement names of the compliance system do not match what is in Ames, cross-reference tables in Ames will be used to map any differences between the compliance system and Ames.

You Need a Black Box to Plan Aircraft Maintenance!

When you think of a black box in aviation, you’re probably thinking literally. But with Ames, the success of our smart tools for maintaining compliance and administering a reliable maintenance plan lies in the fact our software is systematically a black box.In other words, the data that Ames takes in and delivers as a solution cannot be impacted by any external sources. An airline’s compliance system has no ability to affect Ames’ analysis of data, so its predictions, “what if” scenarios, and general extrapolation of maintenance planning schedules are entirely pure.This sets Ames apart from other aircraft maintenance software solutions that have their own embedded compliance systems, because no bias is allowed in its processing of information. It also allows Ames’ predictions to be more accurate and properly verified by the compliance system to meet FAA regulations outlined for every aircraft in your fleet.Standalone compliance systems fail at this because they’re so restricted by the limitations of compliance/regulation information. Any internal attempt to extrapolate predictions of maintenance dates is hampered by its own myopic agenda.The bottom line? To make successful fleet maintenance predictions, a black box smart tool like Ames is required. That’s why 15% of the world’s airlines work with Omega’s smart tools to increase aircraft availability, reduce over maintenance, maintain compliance with regulatory and engineering mandates, and administer a reliable maintenance planning & scheduling environment.

Get Started With Ames Today

Ames has the ability to optimize several fleets, providing more aircraft in the sky and improve revenue of aircraft organizations. Omega serves 20% of all aircraft in operation today.For over 27 years, Omega has been dedicated to the development of a smarter way to increase marketable aircraft to flight operations and marketing while maintaining compliance with regulatory and engineering mandates all within a reliable maintenance planning and scheduling environment. The Omega team provides dedicated support to resolve your needs through top customer service.