Now that most aviation manufacturers are providing technical information in electronic format, how is an aircraft operator supposed to use all of that information efficiently? Data is delivered in different formats depending on the manufacturer, and there is little integration of this data from manufacturer to manufacturer.

A company called Enigma has figured out how to solve this problem, and customers such as Goodrich Aerostructures, United Airlines, and KLM have adopted Enigma's solution to great benefit.

What Enigma does, according to John Snow, vice president marketing and business development, is "provide them with an aircraft encyclopedia. It's a combination of all maintenance manuals, all service bulletins, all illustrated parts catalogs, all component manuals, everything that a mechanic might need for information."

The information--in digital form--is already available, thanks to content-creation companies like Arbortext and Right Hemisphere (see pages 21 and 26), but, Snow said, "collecting all the information doesn't solve the mechanic's problem. What's critically important is not just to collect that information and make it available to the mechanic, but to interrelate that information by tail number."

By working with Enigma's software, an airline can make it possible for a mechanic to look up tail number-specific maintenance data. "You can punch in the tail number and a fault code," Snow said, "and you'll have the recommended procedures for that specific 737. Also, service bulletins that relate to that tail number will be displayed."

The normal way that maintenance is done calls for frequent reference to the maintenance manual. But, as Snow noted, "the maintenance manual doesn't know about service bulletins. I want to look at the service bulletin against a procedure to see if it's going to modify my decision on how to maintain it. I'm not constrained in how I can navigate all of this information, [and I can] quickly get an accurate picture of how to maintain this aircraft."

KLM used Enigma's software to build its own solution called MBox. Enigma is tied to KLM's document-management system. An example of how this works is for a process created by KLM's engineering department. The process is likely different from the OEM's original maintenance manual procedure, and once the engineers release the new process, it automatically hooks into the Enigma content-delivery system so it is now part of the ongoing maintenance documentation. Instead of modifying the maintenance data, the new engineering process becomes a key part of the maintenance manual.

KLM claims a 5 percent improvement in maintenance productivity since implementing Enigma at its Schipol, Netherlands base, according to Snow, which translates to huge savings in maintenance costs. KLM is now looking at deploying Enigma to line maintenance stations.

Now that KLM and Air France have completed their merger, Enigma is working on persuading the Air France side of the house to adopt the Enigma solution, too. "We're having ongoing discussions about Air France," Snow said.

At Goodrich Aerostructures, the return on investment for the Enigma implementation was about six months, Snow said.

In the case of United Airlines, Enigma was asked to develop a solution quickly for the airline. What UAL wants is for Enigma to adhere to the airline's existing standards and present maintenance information in a way that mechanics are used to seeing, Snow said. "Once that's done, we'll hand over the keys and they will be responsible for it," he said. An added benefit is that Enigma's J2EE architecture makes it easy to link with UAL's back-office computer system.

During the final quarter of this year, UAL plans to deploy Enigma at one or two locations, then roll it out to all line stations in the first half of 2005, according to Snow. When the full system is running, more than one million pages of maintenance information will be accessible in real-time. "Mechanics will type in the task number and `boom,' they'll be off and running," he said.

Enigma offers additional benefits, such as the ability to allow mechanics to collaborate, sharing information learned on the job, information that might not be found in official documents. "Historically," said Snow, "they write on paper, keep it in their pocket, if they ever document [these problems], or keep it in their head. Meanwhile, [other mechanics] have the same problem." With Enigma, mechanics can jot notes in the maintenance "encyclopedia, sort of in the margin," he said, "and dictate who it gets shared with." If a mechanic is commenting about a particular maintenance practice that might not be correct, for example, the maintenance crews can elect to share the margin notes with engineers and technical writers at the manufacturer that created the original document.

"The minute it's jotted down," he added, "when the next mechanic goes to do that task, not only is he informed of applicable service bulletins, etc., he's also notified that there's a mechanic's note against this. That way you're able to disseminate knowledge and experience. It cranks up efficiency.

"We don't create documents," Snow concluded. "We leave that up to the Abortexts. We're providing tools that for the first time address the needs of mechanics and field service engineers." -- By Matt Thurber