Boeing

Following a competitive bidding process, Boeing Capital Corporation (BCC) recently selected its sister subsidiary Continental DataGraphics (CDG) to digitize critical maintenance records for BCC-owned commercial airplanes. BCC provides and arranges airplane leases and loans, with a primary focus on assets critical to Boeing customers.

"CDG distinguished itself in the competitive bid process by demonstrating an outstanding customer support attitude, and a willingness to develop a customized solution and process methodology to accommodate our unique requirements," said Bruce Beadell, BCC Technical Services director.

The conversion of airplane records and documents to a CD-ROM format allows BCC to provide critical maintenance documents to prospective airplane lessees more efficiently and decreases the volume of paper that accompanies an airplane when a lease turns over.

"Losing a single key aircraft maintenance document can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to replace because the maintenance work must be performed again and re-documented," said Beadell.

In addition to ensuring that important aircraft records are protected from loss or damage, the conversion of documents to digital format greatly assists in BCC's marketing efforts. According to Beadell, having aircraft records readily available when an aircraft comes off a lease gives prospective lessees quicker access to important data used in evaluating an airplane, and understanding its configuration and condition.

Digitized records also will help BCC reduce the physical volume of aircraft historical records that must be stored for its portfolio of airplanes, said Beadell.

To date, CDG has digitized the maintenance documentation of 12 commercial airplanes for BCC. This required the scanning of tens of thousands of critical airplane records at the BCC airplane storage facility, the transfer of the resulting digital files to CDG for data processing and indexing, and the output of the indexed files onto a single CD-ROM for each airplane. Each CD-ROM is customized to contain the critical document sets for a specific airplane by serial number. CDG also developed a BCC proprietary menu-based user interface for the CD-ROMs to make it easier to access and retrieve records. The entire project took approximately three months to complete.

BCC plans to digitize critical maintenance records for all its airplanes as they come off lease, said Beadell. BCC and CDG will work together to further enhance the CD-ROM system using the results of this initial 12-airplane project and feedback from BCC customers.

According to Beadell, BCC selected CDG for the project because CDG was responsive to BCC's request for a working prototype of the CD-ROM system and offered competitive pricing for the final product.

For more information about CDG, see Continental DataGraphics website. For more information about Boeing Capital Corporation, see the BCC website.