'Work Order' system for aircraft maintenance client

[Mark]

Hello Group!

I have a long term client who is currently using a propietary (and old)
system for their accounting/sales/CRM system. They are looking to replace it
with something better and easier to find help with.

They perform maitenance on aircraft as their main activity. They also sell
parts to outside customers, and sell aviation fuel to customers who fly into
their facilities.

The aircraft 'Work Orders' can be quite large, with more than 1000
individual items in work, with labor and parts applied (typically, a 'Work
Order' billed out to a customer has more than $1M in labor and parts on it).
Usually, they have about five of these large projects in work at a time,
along with multiple smaller projects.

Is Dynamics GP a good starting point (they have 105 employees, annual sales
of about $30M)? As I am their 'IT Guy', and they come to me for their
network, server, desktop needs, it would be good to get them to continue
along with more Microsoft products.

Thanks for any help on a direction!

--
Best Regards,

Mark

[Mariano Gomez]

Mark,

I performed work for Miami Air International and Arrow Cargo, both in South
Florida and both using Microsoft Dyanamics GP. I would be more than glad to
assist, but please contact me offline with the information below.

Best regards,
--
MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MIS, MCP, PMP
Maximum Global Business, LLC
http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com

[Mark]

Thanks! I'll contact you in a day or so.
--
Best Regards,

Mark

[Frank Hamelly, MCP-GP]

Mark:

GP can certainly handle your requirements. At first glance, it looks
to me like you would want a project accounting module to handle the
'work orders' rather than using GP manufacturing as it sounds like
these projects can be long-term in nature and you might want to do
progress billings, etc.

If that's the case, my suggestion would be to look at some of the 3rd
party project accounting applications out there rather than using GP's
Project Accounting as in my humble opinion, it is too cumbersome and
user-unfriendly. Some of the notable 3rd party apps come from Olympic
Systems, WennSoft, Marcil Technologies, and a couple others that don't
come to mind right at the moment.

Good luck, GP is a great platform.

Frank Hamelly
MCP-GP, MCT
East Coast Dynamics
www.eastcoast-dynamics.com

[Mark]

Thanks, Frank, for your recommendation. I'll also take a look at those
vendors and see if their solution would work for this application. You hit
the nail on the head - most of these are six month projects and yes they need
progress payments from the end customer.

Thanks, Again!
--
Best Regards,

Mark

[Mariano Gomez]

Mark,

The reason I asked you to call is because in most cases GP (or any third
party out there) will not sufice in the Aircraft Maintenance world.

Take for example work orders or work cards as it is known in the industry.
Work orders are usually generated based on tech records or as a result of the
flight log. In addition, most aircraft maintenance systems will allow you to
view all pending items on a work order. Are you required to create task
cards? GP or any third party will not help you here, since most task cards
are electronically generated based on Boeing's data in order to ensure they
are created with the lastest revisions effective.

Another aspect is Aircraft inventory. Is your customer required to keep
track of these? GP inventory module will not come even close, since aircraft
inventory is generally a collection of events related to a specific aircraft
(life limited components, inspections, AD notes, etc.). This will result in
wide -- as in astronomical -- variety of records requiring different
handling. This of course, ties into the task cards.

What about FAA reporting? Assemblies in assembies?

Again, I am not familiar with your customer's operation nor am I scaring you
away from GP, but the way you use GP in this kind of environment will depend
on what you are trying to accomplish. If it is billing, it will do just fine.
If the idea is to have it serve as an Aircraft Maintenance system, or even
attempt to manage work orders, then you will be in for a surprise.

If you are still interested, call me to discuss with the contact information
below.

Best regards,
--
MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MIS, MCP, PMP
Maximum Global Business, LLC
http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com

[Frank Hamelly, MCP-GP]

Excellent points Mariano. Alot depends on whether Mark is just
looking for an accounting/billing/CRM system as his original post
seems to indicate, or a full blown ERP application with inventory, QC/
QA, service orders, etc.

Mark, if the requirement is for the latter, you might do well to look
at applications that are specific to the aviation industry.

[Mark]

Thanks, Mariano, for your comments. You are correct, the customer wants to be
able to create 'Work Orders' which are used for billing, a list of
'discrepancies' which the technicians use to work the problems found on the
aircraft and tracks parts and labor hours, etc. The present custom
application is old (more than ten years) and based on old db technology, but
does do all the above. And as you describe, there is a lot of 'front end'
code required to give them what they are required.
--
Best Regards,

Mark

[Mark]

Thanks, Frank, again, for your insight. My customer is interested in
Microsoft as it is easy to find someone with experience to work with the
software, and was familiar with Great Plains as an accounting package. My
initial opinion was they were asking too much of any accounting package
except for specialized application for aircraft maintenance. While I am sure
it may be done, it may be more expensive than a 'canned' application for that
specific purpose. I will also talk with Mariano about some costs as I can see
it will require some extensive programming to marry the customer's desires to
what GP can do.
--
Best Regards,

Mark