Airline & Aerospace MRO & Operations IT Conference Review
7th and 8th June 2010 – Frankfurt
 
Last week Wayne and I attended the European and Middle East instance of the Airline & Aerospace MRO & Operations IT Conference in Frankfurt.  
http://www.aircraft-commerce.com/conferences/Frankfurt_2010/default.asp

Being run for the fifth year by Aircraft Commerce and attended by anyone who is anyone in aerospace IT this was apparently the only “must attend” show there is.  The show came a little bit early for us to exhibit, but our intention was to catch up with what was new in the industry, attend some interesting speeches and network with the main airworthiness system providers with a view to obtaining APIs to help us develop our mytechlog.net app interfaces.
 

After the usual registration formalities and a quick coffee and croissant it was straight on with a full programme of presentations, case studies and workshops.  Proceedings got off to a promising start with a passionate and shouty keynote speech by SAKS Consulting’s Sharhabeel Lone.  His topic of “The rights and wrongs of MRO implementations” was a refreshingly brutal lecture aimed at those delegates who were perhaps about to embark on an MRO system implementation.  Scattered with statistics of the number of failed and overrunning projects his message did at times seem a little bleak with promises of failed ROI, scope creep and lower than planned functionality.  I think the presentation did provide a vital reality check and set an important tone which was continually referred to throughout the conference by other speakers and delegates.  However if the usual pleas for executive commitment, risk management, scoping and structured approaches did not fall on deaf ears then there is some hope for IT Success.

The conference was divided into two main streams over the two days with presentations and cases studies in the main conference hall and more informal tutorial style workshops in a more intimate meeting area.  Whilst MRO presentations were being carried out on day one it was a programme of operations topics in the workshops and this was reversed for day two.  Whilst the presentations were going on there were exhibits from some 30+ software vendors on small uniformly sized stands where the emphasis was on technical discussion and demonstration rather than executive schmoozing and boozing that you would often see at the bigger trade shows.

The MRO presentations on day one were mostly case studies of maintenance organisations outlining improvements to processes and time savings that had been realised through the utilisation of technologies such as RFID tagged ground equipment, rationalised IT assets and the automation of planned maintenance.  Nothing earth shattering, but some interesting insights.  More enlightening were private discussions with other delegates and exhibitors.  We managed to discuss mytechlog.net with a couple of technical representatives of the main airworthiness software vendors.  Interest in our product ranged from several counts of seemingly genuine interest through to one instance of vexed hostility from one well known vendor.  I can’t quite work out whether this agitation was caused by the fact that we were producing quick, simple software and therefore not worthy of interfacing with more complex and bloated software or that we had uncovered the fact that the airworthiness software in question does not have a Service Orientated Architecture (SOA) that does not have any readily available Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

Quite naturally we tended to gravitate to any fellow delegates who were advocating a similar philosophy to our own, that being enterprise software was moving towards lighter, simpler niche software that is inter-connected through the consumption of services.  One enjoyable chat we had with a representative of a large OEM concluded with our fellow delegate being uncertain as to whether we were geniuses or mad men… isn’t there a quote along those lines where the difference is measured by success??  The grumpy software vendor from earlier hosted a cocktail reception to close the first day’s proceedings, so after a couple of nibbles and beers all was forgiven.

Day two began with a workshop by the SAKS Consulting team.  Sharhabeel Lone’s passionate speech from the previous day must have struck the correct tone, as the session was fully subscribed and we were subject to a bit more of the same impassioned bellowing which was well received by an attentive Egyptian delegation front and centre.  The pick of the presentations came from David Ploog and Christophe Mostert of m2p Consulting whose workshop entitled “An end to end Project Lifecycle of MRO system replacement masterclass” encouraged the most debate and conjecture.  Somewhat disappointingly this particular workshop was the only presentation we attended which outlined a vision of current and future trends in aerospace IT systems.  It was refreshing and reassuring to hear that these opinions closely matched our own.  It is a shame that trends in other areas of IT have not yet been fully embraced by aerospace IT in the field of MRO.  Next generation technologies such as Open Source, true Service Orientated Architecture and multi-platform applications were distinctly ominous in their absence.  Software vendors were espousing how feature rich and complex their systems were and it is striking to note how far behind this way of thinking is compared to the cutting edge trends in other sectors of the IT industry.

The conference was well organised by the Aircraft Commerce team headed up by Charles Williams and Ed Haskey who throughout the show were ever present, approachable and affable.  It speaks volumes to note that delegate attendance was high throughout the event without the usual drifting off to the hotel bar or for sightseeing.  Delegate numbers were well over 200 and was a veritable who’s who of aerospace IT.  I would thoroughly recommend visiting the conference in the future and fully intend to exhibit next year.

Related Posts:
How to make Simpler MRO Software: Part 2
How to make Simpler MRO Software: Part 1
Why MRO Software isn't Simpler
Why isn’t MRO Software Simpler?