Jeff Leavitt
What business trends or challenges are you hearing from the conversations with your customers over the past year?
Manoj Singh
Jeff, I think one thing is very well known in the industry right now, which is kind of something that has been happening for the last couple of years. Supply chain constraint has surfaced up as one of the key challenges that the industry is facing and coupled with that, we are also seeing a lot of resource labor shortages that the industry is also facing. So more and more, what we are hearing from our customers is that they want to be able to do more with less. They have less resources, they have less labor and of course the supply chain constraints. So that is probably one of the biggest challenges that we are seeing in the industry from our customers. Another aspect that we are seeing is a lot of and which has been there for quite some time, is the unpredictability that the industry in general is facing. But more importantly, the third-party MROs in terms of what the demand pattern is going to look like because they are still very a lot of unknowns around how the market is picking back up in different regions. And that throws a lot of challenges for some of these MROs that are the macro level. At the micro level, we see, you know, usual challenges of when they are talking about, let's say the Indian MROs not really knowing what they're going to find out when they open the engine so that the standard unpredictability that exists right at the macro and as the micro level. So that's another thing that we are seeing in industry and the need to manage and shorten the turnaround time from one end to the other. That always remains. But companies are continuing to look for now this is where the technology and innovation comes in. Are there things that technology providers can do or provide that can provide some significant chunk of reduction in the turnaround time that is keep you know, we keep getting that kind of questions from our customers?
Jeff
And is that more about providing the right data, getting the right transparency is about like automating some of the tasks in between or like helping them to sequence the checks.
Manoj
So automation, integration and some level of intelligence into the process. I think all these come together when they try to address some of these problems. For example, being able to have some sort of inter-enterprise integration is required, and part of that is the data sharing required for the MRO to get a good visibility into the demand pattern.
That is, from the airline’s perspective, the more the airlines can share their data, their maintenance programs, their compliance is what the fleet utilization looks like. I think some of their larger MRO suppliers will be better prepared from the capacity and from the material perspective. So that's very much part of the equation. In terms of that, using that at the macro level, the uncertainty, or unknowns in their overall operations.
Jeff
I want to go back to one of the first things you said. You mentioned that there were some resourcing challenges. Do you see this most acutely at the frontline, like the technicians, the inspectors, or does it apply sort of all the way up the organization? And how do you see technology playing a role more on the front line?
Manoj
I think we are seeing it mostly on the front lines side of the house, being able to find the right skilled resource technicians to be able to carry out different types of MRO operations that MROs contact all the way from line to hangar down to the shops as well as labs for engine work and broadly from the technology, from the solutions perspective, we categorize it into two parts.
One is you can do it at the planning level and the second is the execution level. And at the planning level where we come and try to help our customers is really from the overall optimizing. So being able to do the same or more in terms of number of work orders that you can process or the number of aircraft that you can squeeze into in a hangar.
Jeff
So all that being able to do through a much better optimization solution that we can bring to the market. Similarly, on the line maintenance side, if we look at it, can you talk about those line stations, given the demand pattern that you know of the aircraft coming in with the same or a smaller number of resources?
Manoj
That’s the planning and aspect of addressing this whole shortage problem at the more execution level, like you mentioned. I think there are tools and technologies that we are bringing to the market, specifically around productivity improvements like mobile apps that do provide a level of productivity improvement that can also help with being able to do same or more amount of work with a smaller number of resources that might be available to the to the companies.
Jeff
Yeah, the mobility one is interesting because it's something we've been talking about probably for the last five or ten years in the industry. But you still see, I would say like adoption lagging in most, most regions and specifically on the MRO side, like what do you think is holding airlines, technicians, or whichever stakeholder like what's holding adoption back?
Manoj
Yeah, and this is where I think the intersection of some of these resources, labor and technology adoption starts to come into play. One infrastructure level challenge that we have seen that has come and impacted the adoption of mobility mobile apps is really availability of the Internet connections. The Wi-Fi is in different parts of the world. So more and more we are seeing in the U.S., I think that reason is going away. But still in a lot of even, I would say advanced countries like even Canada for that matter, that option relatively has been low. In fact, our customers who bought mobile apps from us, they did not deploy simply for the reason that they did not have the right level of connectivity at hang ups and other field locations. That's one part of I think, why I think there has been relatively low adoption of mobile apps. Other is on the defense side of the house, we see more security being the reason why they want to slow down on mobile app deployment compared to being able to use it on a desktop where they have the right level of security.
Konstantinos Varsos
Define what mobile app security is. Still a little bit of a question mark on the defense side that we have seen. And the last thing I would say is and this ties back to the labor shortages. Wherever we see that the average age of labor is really on the higher side, I think change management comes in, comes into a picture, but wherever there is a younger crowd, I think there the adoption rate for the mobile apps is very high, but they are very able to because many of these mobile apps that have been built using the native capabilities of these mobile apps or these devices, they pretty much use those native capabilities that the younger generation is already used to using it.
Manoj
The adoption rate is very high, but if the average age is high on the higher side there, we have seen some limited adoption of these mobile apps. Yeah. And I would imagine coming out of COVID, given all the changes to the workforce during COVID, the like, we're kind of primed for adoption right now because there's like there's a large cultural shift with a lot of a lot of the workforce leaving and not coming back and starting fresh with new faces, with new roles. It does feel like a good time to start reengaging some of this technology. Absolutely. I think if those more infrastructure and security related, some of that is perception. Some of that is reality is going to be taken care of. I think mobile app will have the right adoption, I believe, across the globe. Yeah.
Konstantinos
How do you know, you mentioned a little bit about the supply chain being strained these days. Right. And from the technology standpoint, what do you see the solutions there available for their lines or their models, how they manage that? So, there are a couple of things that, you know, we are trying to do and discuss with our customers.
Manoj
One is and this is, you know, very interesting, it's almost like taking a, taking a page or a leaf from other industries, specifically retail, where the whole sharing of data in terms of capacity as well as material availability across the organizations is very high. The whole CBF, RF and other processes that the collaborative processes that other industries follow. So I think there's a need for companies to be able to give visibility and get visibility from their suppliers to enables concepts like capacities, securing, being able to dedicate a few supplies but have the capacity secured from those suppliers in terms of these supply chain constraints so that even though you have it constrained but you are committing at the contractual level that I am committing, that I will take so much of capacity from you. There’s a contractual obligation. Also from the technology perspective, you know. You know, we are seeing that the more you can give them the ability. So, because at the end of the day, from the MRO perspective, you're running into supply chain constraints. Then you whenever you run into a situation of a decision making where repair works as a replacement, Right.
You maybe want to do more of a repair than a replacement, because the replacement automatically means that you must rely on your suppliers or part suppliers to provide that replacement parts, or you get it from the supply chain. This is a trend that a very recent trend that we are starting to see that more and more large organization, the larger MRO, are starting to expand their capacity for repairs, which I think ties back to the fact that they are filling their supply chain constraints.
They want to bring back some of their repair capabilities in-house. That's one of the areas where are helping our customers as well. We've talked about several like business trends, technology trends. How does this all relate to Aramco, like given what you've heard and learned over the past few years? Like, yeah, how are you thinking about where you want to focus?
Where do you see innovation and how does that impact your roadmap? Yeah, so, you know, one of the things that I mentioned at the very beginning that the challenges that companies are facing is all this resource and labor and supply chain constraints needing requiring a better planning and optimization capability so that you can do more with less. From Ramco’s perspective, we have developed and we are continuing to enhance advanced planning and optimization capabilities, whether it is for within the hangar or with into enterprise planning, looking across multiple enterprises or doing an optimization of resources for a line station or a set of line stations.
We have this in memory planning and optimization engine. That pretty much is an engine that you can use to solve any of these optimization problems. And we are seeing more and more use cases being brought to us for us to be able to use that engine for many of these business scenarios for the optimization and certainly the need has risen quite a bit from our perspective.
Jeff
Planning and optimization, that's one piece that we are really focused on because we have quite a few different business use cases coming to us. Other thing that you know, I talked about the need for a reduction in turnaround time. There are a few things that we have done with one single capability we're able to both do a significant reduction in the turnaround time as well as address the need to go paperless in the industry.
And the example that I wanted to give is, I think, going to gain a lot of ground and that also actually go to the point on unpredictability that third party models have is being we call it a task digitization. What that really is just to understand the business context, third party models, specifically at the hanger of our largest checks and other checks must be done before the aircraft rolls into the hangar.
Some of these commercial airline models, they get people to start to get the paperwork for those aircraft, for the tasks that they must perform, all the material and resources that they may need. They start to get those documents. One month in advance, because that's the time 3 to 4 weeks it takes for them to go through those documents, extract that operational information and put that into a system, and then accept those aircraft on which they have to start working on.
We brought this task or digitization that can reduce that one month to literally one day. The tool can scan those documents, PDFs, or word documents. And with little bit of configuration, it has the intelligence to understand the beginning, the end of tasks, what the material requirements are within a given task. There will be hundreds of those tasks which the system is able to extract, put them into task library and task to the maintenance programs which have to be performed on those aircraft.
So huge improvement techniques literally, and the impact of that on turnaround time. Other thing that I wanted to mention, which is another unique thing that we have brought to the market, is customer portal. What that is really is for companies, the MRO, to be able to collaborate with their customers through this customer portal. And there are multiple use cases in terms of approval of code, etc..
But one-use case that ties directly to the turnaround time is that whenever the work starts to happen, invariably they run into situations where they have some out of scope or non-routine. They find all the time as they do it right and the current process of identification and then communication to supply to customers and getting their approval, etc. It takes a lot of time for very manual and email to phone call driven process, whereas with the capabilities like customer portal and notifications, that can really be automated.
The customer will get the notification of what the out of scope that has them in form. The impact of that on the cost of turnaround time and they can approve that. And that immediate notification goes back to the models for them to start the work. Things like that we are doing that I think has direct implications on some of these problems.
Konstantinos
How about some of the technologies that we used to hear like, you know, two or three years ago, like blockchain and even predictive, you know, maintenance, they should mix and what do you think are those going? I think our first touch about predictive maintenance, I think that has picked up quite a bit in the sense that more and more and that goes back to the unpredictability part that I talked about.
Manoj
One use of scale that we are seeing clearly surfacing is the ability to find of out of scope or a non-routine that happens all the time in the models when they bring an aircraft or a component and what they find out. We are seeing a lot of work being done to find or that bring predictability that are to the unpredictable.
So that particularly as a use case that we are seeing, predictive maintenance I think is very much there. But people are starting to really question, you know, that predictive maintenance.
I think the effectiveness of that right now as it stands from the statistic, all the normal statistical forecasting that has been done using the data, being able to run the AML engine to find out those parameters which were not captured earlier to the statistical forecasting is something that is still being in my view, worked on.
But it requires a little bit more science around the econometric analysis to be able to identify all the potential parameters that can impact your maintenance base on the operations of the aircraft. Work continues to be done, but I think people are also realizing that the statistical forecast is able to take them from the business perspective at the point where they are, they are still able to use that data in along with the maintenance manuals that the audience might have provided.
My point is the incremental benefit of using AML to add to the statistical forecast to get the value for that unknown is still, I think, up in the air at this point of time. Yeah, we've talked a little bit about adoption earlier on, especially given that the current economy and the current like, I guess concern over that, like where we're going to head in the next few years And how do you see MROs and airlines driving better ROI outcomes from new technology.
It's all about being able to identify the right solution and or the right solution and tying that to the right business problem, because otherwise you will have this, you know, hammer looking for a nail kind of situation which we absolutely don't want. So so like I said, I think when when we started this whole task, our digitization, the original problem that we were trying to solve there was the paperless aspect of it.
How can you scan these documents and be able to make it paperless and make it visible to the technicians for them to, you know, do that in their iPad and stuff like that? But suddenly we realized this problem of they are taking so much of time manually before the aircraft comes in. I think being able to map the business problem and the solution I think closely is probably going to be very important for the companies to really get the benefit out of it.
Otherwise, it'll be a situation of you try to go paperless, but then people also question really how much cost do you actually save by, you know, trying to save the paper plate? I mean, environmentally, yes, it makes a lot of sense. But from the economic from the business perspective, I think you got to die a solution to multiple problems that you can find out.
Jeff
You talked about predictive maintenance. What are your views on blockchain? It was at one point, you know, the next big thing, it has taken off in many other industries. What are you seeing in adoption in the aviation industry?
Manoj
You asked about blockchain in addition to the other technology. Personally, I think what we are seeing in the industry is definitely there was a lot of potential that it came with in the last couple of years and based on that potential, a lot of prototypes have been done, For example, trying to find out the record of part from, you know, but to get to grave. But I think that whole hurdle of data sharing between companies that continues to remain the hurdle in trying to make the blockchain work. There are still pockets of opportunities for blockchain that can be explored, but that requires many of these companies within an ecosystem to come together and rather than trying to boil the ocean, I think that it would be very important for companies to figure out those small sub ecosystems in the blockchain world which are driven around certain special type of aircraft. And I'm just picking one because that is very specific and has a very well-defined manufacturer and models and operators would be, let's say Hercules, Lockheed. So Hercules C-130 aircraft very well defined. There are probably less than ten models that do the job on C-130 and there are certain very well-defined government operators. Aircraft with a very closed ecosystem, they become a very good candidate for applying blockchain. Because of that, everybody can share and trust and share the data. But trying to boil the ocean in the commercial world, I think that is still very far out, we believe. Thank you with us. So one question that we ask is, you know, what?
Konstantinos
What excites you about the future. In the aviation industry is all about rocket science and a lot of big activity and we have talked about maintenance, what is the next exciting stuff?
Manoj
The paradigm shift, a fundamental change in how you commute is happening. And I think the disruptor aircraft or the sub subsegment emerging is this whole if you tall and drawn space. I think there are a lot of companies that have a lot of funding has gone into the space and I mean things are still being worked out in terms of the business case and how successful this will be.
But clearly with some big names jumping into it, for example, I think Archer and United have joined hands and the use cases are down, you know, intercity commuting between within in Chicago, in L.A., in New York area. Those are being experimental. I think that's a very big change and a big leap in terms of new stuff that is happening.
And of course, from our perspective, given the fact that we have been in the industry providing solutions from manufacturing to sustainment, logistics, finance and accounting, it’s the whole enchilada. It’s very exciting for us. There are a lot of companies that we have started to work with and providing solutions from one end to the other. That is definitely a game changer.
It is also a game changer from the perspective that one other segment like the BGA or the with the helicopter segment that in many cases was not able to fulfill certain demands of the industry. Now drones and if it does come into the picture and they try to fulfill some of those unmet business needs on the aviation side.
That’s pretty much a very exciting segment that's emerging in my view.
