04.12.18
Xerafy was selected by Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company (HAECO) to implement full tool management solutions and prevent occurrences of Foreign Object Detection (FOD).
HAECO selected Xerafy because of strong referrals from the aviation industry as well as the strong market experience and capabilities the company has demonstrated in RFID tool tracking management for MRO and FOD.
HAECO provides maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services for more than 200 aircrafts each year. Since its inception in 1950, the company has continuously grown to become one of the largest players in the fast-growing global aircraft MRO market, value in excess of USD 67 billion. Over the next ten years, the Asia Pacific and China market will see the fastest and largest global MRO demand growth and spend.
With MRO companies eager to increase efficiency and productivity, HAECO’s Patrick Wong, executive general manager, Line Services and his teams leveraged their operational experience and best practices to identify how combining data and technology can deliver significant improvements.
Each MRO company’s mechanics use their own tools and toolboxes, and at the end of each shift the mechanics have to conduct a full inventory to ensure that they didn’t leave any tools on the aircraft. This process is typically done manually, which is both inefficient and inaccurate. The manual process can also result in duplicate or lost data, as well as inaccuracies in the tool tracking database.
The project team’s vision was to automate the inventory process using a solution with a user-friendly system interface and technology that could incorporate existing tooling and toolboxes without additional investment in new equipment. “We needed a solution that would deliver inventory checks with a single scan, quickly and with 100% accuracy” Wong said. “The interface had to be easy-to-use, while the wide variety of tools to track meant we wanted the flexibility to be able to tag tools and devices of any size.”
The pilot project was completed in Nov. 2017 at HAECO’s Hong Kong main operations site, with a full tracking solution involving a mobile app connected to the company’s back-office system, to track and trace 3,200 tools using handheld RFID readers.
Using Xerafy’s solution, HAECO has reduced inventory checks from 20 minutes to less than three minutes, an 85% reduction that saves 17 minutes per mechanic, per day. HAECO achieved this fast return on investment (ROI) based on the time savings alone.
In addition to making the mechanics more productive, the inventory checks are more accurate and automatically reconciled with the reports. By ensuring that tools aren’t left on the aircraft, HAECO is able to reduce the possibility of foreign object damage (FOD) to its client’s aircraft. The company can also better manage maintenance and upkeep of the expensive tools and can use real-time inventory data to create comprehensive reports and conduct data analysis and business forecasting.
“With the success of the pilot, HAECO has now engaged Xerafy to deploy the whole system involving tagging over 150K tools and providing 200 handheld readers.” said Dennis Khoo, CEO and founder. “Xerafy fully supports HAECO developing competitive advantages by enabling real-time tracking and data capture that are becoming critical to business success in the highly competitive global MRO market.”
HAECO selected Xerafy because of strong referrals from the aviation industry as well as the strong market experience and capabilities the company has demonstrated in RFID tool tracking management for MRO and FOD.
HAECO provides maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services for more than 200 aircrafts each year. Since its inception in 1950, the company has continuously grown to become one of the largest players in the fast-growing global aircraft MRO market, value in excess of USD 67 billion. Over the next ten years, the Asia Pacific and China market will see the fastest and largest global MRO demand growth and spend.
With MRO companies eager to increase efficiency and productivity, HAECO’s Patrick Wong, executive general manager, Line Services and his teams leveraged their operational experience and best practices to identify how combining data and technology can deliver significant improvements.
Each MRO company’s mechanics use their own tools and toolboxes, and at the end of each shift the mechanics have to conduct a full inventory to ensure that they didn’t leave any tools on the aircraft. This process is typically done manually, which is both inefficient and inaccurate. The manual process can also result in duplicate or lost data, as well as inaccuracies in the tool tracking database.
The project team’s vision was to automate the inventory process using a solution with a user-friendly system interface and technology that could incorporate existing tooling and toolboxes without additional investment in new equipment. “We needed a solution that would deliver inventory checks with a single scan, quickly and with 100% accuracy” Wong said. “The interface had to be easy-to-use, while the wide variety of tools to track meant we wanted the flexibility to be able to tag tools and devices of any size.”
The pilot project was completed in Nov. 2017 at HAECO’s Hong Kong main operations site, with a full tracking solution involving a mobile app connected to the company’s back-office system, to track and trace 3,200 tools using handheld RFID readers.
Using Xerafy’s solution, HAECO has reduced inventory checks from 20 minutes to less than three minutes, an 85% reduction that saves 17 minutes per mechanic, per day. HAECO achieved this fast return on investment (ROI) based on the time savings alone.
In addition to making the mechanics more productive, the inventory checks are more accurate and automatically reconciled with the reports. By ensuring that tools aren’t left on the aircraft, HAECO is able to reduce the possibility of foreign object damage (FOD) to its client’s aircraft. The company can also better manage maintenance and upkeep of the expensive tools and can use real-time inventory data to create comprehensive reports and conduct data analysis and business forecasting.
“With the success of the pilot, HAECO has now engaged Xerafy to deploy the whole system involving tagging over 150K tools and providing 200 handheld readers.” said Dennis Khoo, CEO and founder. “Xerafy fully supports HAECO developing competitive advantages by enabling real-time tracking and data capture that are becoming critical to business success in the highly competitive global MRO market.”
