Air Systems future-proofs ERP for military and civil aerospace programmes

“We’re just starting the first of what will be annual deployments of SSA’s service pack for system maintenance ready for go-live in September,” says Steve Hayward, head of business systems development. “This will be the first time we’ve been able to do that, and keep everything synchronised.” Air Systems works on the development, manufacture and delivery of military aircraft, including the Typhoon, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, Hawk advanced jet trainer and the Nimrod maritime reconnaissance aircraft, as well as manufacturing for Airbus Industries. All of these programmes are heavily reliant on its ERP capability, which last year was suffering the consequences of serious customisation, both by the software vendor and BAE Systems’ IT outsource partner CSC. “It was heavily customised in two ways,” explains Hayward. “There was customisation that Baan did for us but there was also another layer developed by CSC. Partly because of that we were unable to sustain ourselves on the planned Baan Service Pack maintenance schedule. So we got out of sync and over time that contributed to data corruption and integrity issues, which in turn affected business confidence – forcing us to invest time and resources confirming data integrity.” Air Systems worked with SSA and CSC on the upgrade, with SSA carrying out software re-engineering. “They transferred ownership of the customisation we’ve taken forward into Baan,” says Hayward. System testing was then performed at BAE’s Dudley site prior to data migration and eventual go-live and roll-out, which was completed within 75 hours. “Implementation started on a Friday and was completed in time for commencement of operations the following Monday. System users reported immediate benefit, with better response speed and significant improvements in batch suite production. In fact, the system is now running twice as fast as before and with far greater reliability.” Beyond the positive user feedback, Hayward also reports significantly better batch synchronisation with Air Systems other enterprise applications. “We have a complex set of batch updates that run over the weekend, and the time for those has halved from 40—50 hours to 20—25 hours. That’s very important: data volumes are increasing and we have to get the systems synchronised between close of play Friday and first thing Monday morning.” Incidentally, aAs part of the upgrade, BAE Systems also went for the SSA OnePoint Application Management Service. “SSA AMS has proven to be an outstanding support mechanism that has meant we’ve been able to get immediate action to resolve any faults or fixes,” comments Hayward. “We will be able to take advantage of regular feature pack updates. It also allows us to keep to our maintenance schedule and migration path.”