H+S Aviation Ltd – a Document Management Case Study

H+S Aviation Jetstream their Document Storage –

A ProcessFlows Document Management solution at H+S Aviation Ltd was initially procured to convert and store ‘mountains of commercial and technical paperwork’ in a secure, electronic and compliant format. It is now growing into an enterprise-scale solution which will soon be integrated with SharePoint.

Flying high

H+S Aviation, part of the BBA Aviation group of companies, specialise in the repair and overhaul of small to medium sized gas turbine and turbofan engines used in commercial and military aeroplanes and helicopters. Working with a variety of well known manufacturers such as GE, Honeywell, P&WC and Rolls-Royce, over 350 employees based at H+S in Portsmouth, contribute to an annual turnover of £60 million.

A need to demonstrate compliance with customer requirements

Each business unit is responsible for managing the progress of an engine through the overhaul or repair process. In an engineering environment such as this, where the safety of an aircraft is paramount, documented compliance with criteria set out by customers and the aircraft industry regulatory bodies, coupled with accountability for repairs and refurbishment, is essential. As a result, every stage of the engine re-build process is meticulously documented.

To meet with regulations, all of this documentation has to be retained for a minimum of six years. As a consequence, stored paper and files were building up, in offices, cupboards and stacked boxes.

Apart from the hassle of trying to locate a document, it was a fire risk, and if the worst did happen, we had no backup system in place. – Terry Smith, Information Systems Co-ordinator.

Secure electronic ‘filing’ takes away the risks associated with storing paper documents

H+S needed to be less dependent on paper across the whole company. It was decided that the priority was to sort out the paper documentation build up and more efficient and secure storage processes had to be put in place.

ProcessFlows worked with H+S to implement an OpenText Alchemy system which would meet their criteria for a scalable Document Management solution. To begin with, the solution was stand-alone, but was then added to, bringing process improvements into other departments, providing an underlying electronic management and storage function for the whole organisation.

All appropriate documentation is now being scanned and converted into electronic images, which are ‘filed’ within Alchemy.

No more need to store paper for years on end and easy desktop access to information

Searching for documentation is now a quick and easy desktop function.

There is now minimal risk of losing critical information from fire or flood, as it is stored securely and backed-up within Alchemy. H+S have had all legacy documentation destroyed, in line with compliance regulations and reclaimed valuable office space and storage areas.

An enterprise-scale Document Storage and Management solution

The HR, Finance and Systems Departments are also now scanning all documentation on demand and indexing it within the repository.

Planned implementation of intelligent data capture software, using OCR with their incumbent scanners, will speed up and automate processes further.

Scanning is now a centralised task – Inbound scanned documents will automatically be ‘recognised’ by the OCR software, which then indexes the document into the appropriate folder – Quality, Systems, HR, Finance, etc.

The next stage will see an Alchemy/SharePoint integration. Users throughout the organisation will then be able to access data held in the underlying Alchemy database via the familiar SharePoint interface.