A&D Leverages ERP Technology

Piper Aircraft Inc. recently selected Infor to undertake a re-implementation of their ERP solution.

The aerospace and defense (A&D) industry is receiving more attention than usual these days. Commercial aircraft downtime, sequestration activities due to quality issues, and budget cuts have recently made headlines for the aviation industry within the United States. Despite the recent spat of bad press, A&D contractors are still experiencing a high demand, but it comes with a growing need for lean competition. This is achieved through organic methods like winning new business or by making selective cost reductions to sustain assets within the enterprise. Either route can lead to success, but in the face of a market downturn, investing in technology can help ensure cost-effective production growth.

It is clear that A&D contractors will adopt commercially-accepted best practices to have a better chance for success within the shifting global market. An increasingly important aspect of this paradigm shift is the adoption of enterprise solutions, formerly known as commercial off the shelf software (COTS). Contractors have long sought to improve operational performance and reduce costs by investing in such solutions; however, most fail to accept the necessary business practices that are necessary for implementation. Executing these practices has led many organizations to undertake business process re-engineering (BPR) projects, which tend to be a quagmire of resource consumption in preparation for the implementation of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution.

Industry Needs
Today, contractors simply cannot afford the luxury or expense of these BPR efforts to analyze the as-is versus the to-be process prior to implementation. Some even took on the effort of customizing the vendor software to invoke the desired business process, a task that is usually fruitless. Maintaining an ERP proved not only to be expensive but inefficient as original implementations or customizations are left in place.

Customization of an enterprise solution has been done in the past for a number of reasons. Many A&D contractors simply needed to incorporate industry specific requirements that are not needed by other industries. Examples would be the need to create a DD250 or providing capabilities within the quality management module for first article inspection.

Top: The Infor LN dashboard provides key insights for aerospace and defense production. Bottom: Infor Project Manager allow users to estimate completion time, monitor performance, and determine earned value.

Today, most modern ERP solutions that choose to compete in the A&D space have incorporated such functionality. A&D contractors also customize enterprise software simply to integrate with exterior solutions acquired from another vendor, or are home-grown legacy systems that need to stay in place. Many need to keep completed configurations electronically or store program costing information records. Migrating this data into the new ERP system is costly, with little or no benefit, so integration to the system being implemented is required.

Implementing a new enterprise solution or migrating to a newer version of existing software creates an opportunity to optimize overall performance or reduce costs. An effort to customize existing software or create extravagant work-a-rounds that cater to business practices may actually inhibit growth or flexibility. That can be a costly mistake and re-implementation or migration is often a more cost effective manner to reach the end goals within an ERP project.

Re-Implementation Solution
Piper Aircraft Inc. recently selected Infor to undertake a re-implementation of their ERP solution. Infor LN offers a broad base of functionality to help Piper Aircraft manage applications including warehousing, product lifecycle management, financial accounting, and manufacturing execution. The latest version of Infor LN is a forward-thinking, flexible solution capable of achieving concurrent growth in collaboration with Piper Aircraft.

Infor has taken significant effort to invoke the unique industry requirements into their ERP solutions. The research and development team from Infor has worked in concert with some of its largest A&D customers to understand these requirements, placing them into the base solution in the hopes of reducing customization and integration needs. The needs for defense contracts, pegging for cost control and quality management are just a few of the areas that have been expanded in order to support A&D customers. The ERP system has exposed the data utilizing Infor’s Open Network (ION) in order to allow integration when necessary without customization of the source code. The combination of adding the industry specific requirements and opening the solution to integrate easily make implementations far easier and less costly.

Infor Project Manager provides useful reports for tracking critical production functions.

Infor LN has been selected to provide Piper Aircraft with a financial accounting suite, capable of establishing the truer cost measurement for aircraft planning. Users can make informed business decisions thanks to simplified access to financial data and planning tools. Piper Aircraft identified Infor LN as a suitable manufacturing solution amongst current market competitors. The product also provides an open architecture middleware that leaves room for future growth without the concern of proprietary data obstacles. Further, LN establishes a unified ERP option that allows for easier configuration and eliminates the need for individual upgrades and subsequent testing.

The maturity of ERP packages has evolved, and those that implement them do not have to sacrifice on functionality as they did in the 1990s. It was foolish to think that all industries would operate in an identical fashion without the need for industry-specific functionality being available in the core ERP solution, so A&D contractors were forced to find some sort of compromise. The business solutions of the future will need to implement new technology faster, because A&D contractors utilize new concepts into the products they deliver to their customers, ERP becomes a new answer to the same old question.

Infor
New York, N.Y.
www.infor.com

Piper Aircraft Inc.
Vero Beach, Fla.
www.piper.com