Defense communications and engineering contractor uses

Customer
Case Study
Costpoint MES
“With Costpoint MES,
we’re now able to get
the work done as fast
as possible, do the
inspections and move
on to the next task
with greater ease and
accuracy.”
»» Carl McKay,
Director of
Business Operations Oklahoma City, ARINC
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ARINC
Defense communications and engineering contractor
uses Costpoint MES to successfully expand into the
MRO market
The Challenge
Over the past 80 years, ARINC has evolved into a
dynamic, progressive leader, providing engineering
solutions to industries such as aerospace &
defense, aviation, airports, government, networks,
security and transportation. Although it offers a
full portfolio of innovative products and services
around the globe, ARINC continues to support the
commercial aviation industry and the U.S. military
from its growing office in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
ARINC’s Oklahoma City office remains integral
to the company’s diversification in key service
markets. In fact, established in 1990, this location
currently serves three rapidly expanding markets:
modernization of military aircraft; upgrading
of commercial and general aviation airframes;
and industrial and systems engineering for the
Department of Defense and government agencies.
Recently, ARINC’s Oklahoma operations had
the opportunity to move into the maintenance,
repair and operations (MRO) business, pursuing
contracts with large airframe type aircrafts.
Prior to this transition, the Oklahoma office had
primarily been a services company; because of
that, its accounting system was only set up to deal
with the basic engineering services required by
government customers.
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“ARINC deals in commercial, military and
engineering services, offering full integration of
products that pretty much cover all spectrums,”
says Carl McKay, Director of Business Operations
for the Oklahoma City business unit. “With that as
our legacy, we did not have the systems in place to
deal with doing modifications, for instance dealing
with rework replacement, quality, planning and
those kinds of things. Instead, we were working
with spreadsheets and other point solutions that
were not tied into our core accounting system,
Deltek Costpoint. Because we didn’t have a fullyintegrated system, we were having major problems
in terms of being able to collect our cost for labor,
as well as materials, and to make sure our shop
floor MRO operations were running efficiently and
cost-effectively.”
The Solution
ARINC began looking for a solution that would
unite its shop floor and back-office together, so it
could collect costs in a timely, hassle-free manner,
reduce cycle times, improve quality, and lower
costs in its aircraft MRO operations. Choosing
Costpoint MES for greater visibility and control,
the group found it was able to significantly reduce
man-hours and improve shop-floor efficiency,
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thus eliminating instances of potential contract
and cost overruns.
“After looking around at different systems,
only Deltek Costpoint MES had a lot of the
facets that we needed in project manufacturing
software,” says McKay. “It has wireless access so
we didn’t have to deal with paper collection of our
time and we didn’t have to print and distribute
paper to direct our MRO tasks – all instructions
are accessed electronically on the go. And with
easy integration into Costpoint, now we see that
whatever is happening on the shop floor flows
right into time collection, which directly feeds into
Costpoint—so, basically, we have instantaneous
alerts in case of an overrun situation.”
The Benefit
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ARINC’s Oklahoma business unit discovered that
Costpoint MES fit in perfectly with the company’s
plans to expand into the MRO market.
“Now, we really do have a single thread through
the whole system. From this system, I can take a
lot of what I have on one aircraft project and just
overlay it on to the second one, without taking the
hours to start from scratch and re-plan the whole
process. No question, because of that we are a lot
more efficient in terms of non-recurring planning.”
Helping the company collect costs in a timelier
manner, the real-time, electronic alerts within
Costpoint MES also enabled McKay and team to
make sure their operations were performing ontime and on-track.
“For instance, let’s say a task is supposed to
take 10 hours,” McKay explains. “Now if this task
goes past 10 hours, we get a flag that goes to the
supervisor alerting him or her of a potential overrun
situation.
If it turns out that there really is a problem, MES
lets us address is proactively, instead of finding it
out 3 or 4 weeks after it’s too late.”
The benefits of ARINC’s newly-streamlined
business processes didn’t end there. Thanks to
the system’s wireless, paperless capabilities, the
company’s Business Operations unit was able to
update project data from anywhere on the shopfloor—even within the aircrafts themselves.
“Without the burden of paper trails, we ensure
that the mechanic doesn’t have to get off the
aircraft to update or track things down now,” says
McKay. “Instead, our mechanics can get tech
orders and other things by bringing it up on an
iPad or tablet screen, or I can send a message to
our quality control people without having to track
someone down. It’s been able to compress our
time, and with that efficiency we’re able to deliver
a better quality product in less time.”
“With Costpoint MES, we’re now able to get the
work done as fast as possible, do the inspections
and move on to the next task with greater
ease and accuracy,” finishes McKay. “Because
everything is electronic and user-friendly, it makes
our work really efficient and gets us straight
to the point—finishing our maintenance and
repair operations, without distractions. Without
question, this system will help any company in our
line of business.”
The Deltek Advantage
•Timelier, real-time data
•Wireless, paperless capabilities
•Reduced cycle times
•Operations performing on-time and on-track
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