HAECO Digitalization Takes Off With Modern App Architecture
- By Sheila Lam
- June 18, 2023
Hong Kong’s aviation sector had unprecedented challenges in the past few years. The pandemic has restricted travel and reduced Hong Kong’s air traffic by two-thirds in 2022.
The challenging times did not ground the digital transformation journey at Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company (HAECO)—one of the world’s leading independent aircraft engineering and maintenance groups. As one of HAECO Group’s 16 operating companies and home to its headquarters, HAECO Hong Kong took the opportunity to modernize its enterprise application architecture and prepare the company to pivot as the borders reopened.
Reaching new altitudes with aircraft maintenance
Based in Hong Kong International Airport, HAECO Hong Kong provides round-the-clock support to more than 100 airlines with a full spectrum of services, including airframe services, component services, engine services, technical inventory management, fleet technical management, parts manufacturing, and more. One major leg of this digital journey is introducing an industry-specific aircraft maintenance core system.
“It is a purpose-built software to handle aircraft engineering services,” said Norman Chan, head of IT at HAECO Hong Kong. The modernized system digitalizes existing work processes for better efficiency and accuracy.
Nevertheless, the transformation did not stop there. The new core maintenance system comes with the potential of multiple digitalization projects—from managing airlines’ work packages for maintenance services and material management solutions to driving new insights into engineers’ experience and real-time maintenance status for airlines.
The sky is the limit with application integration
“Integration plays a key role,” added Chan. To realize the full potential of the new core maintenance system, HACEO Hong Kong must be able to integrate it with different existing systems, both external and internal.
He added integration of the core maintenance system with the external airlines’ systems for flight information and maintenance work packages enabled higher accuracy in each maintenance job. Integrating the core maintenance and internal learning management systems also allows HACEO Hong Kong to keep track of the engineers’ license information for proper task assignments.
“Similar to the pilots, aircraft engineers are also required to record their periods of work and refresh their training for license renewal or revalidation,” said Chan. “The integration of our maintenance system with the learning management system allows us to plan and arrange training for engineers based on the upcoming demand for new aircraft maintenance services.”
Integrating these systems swiftly is vital for HAECO Hong Kong to achieve an aggressive timeline for implementing several major projects as it prepares to handle a larger volume of maintenance projects.
But with multiple industry-specific open-source applications, HACEO Hong Kong’s development team used to rely on heavy coding work, creating a bottleneck for these projects. The company turned to Boomi’s intelligent integration and automation platform to speed up the integration processes. This low-code platform allows developers to connect different applications easily, speeding up integration times by 300% and eliminating integration project bottlenecks.
“We needed an intuitive solution to help us configure our processes faster and accelerate the turnaround time,” said Chan. “Boomi’s easy-to-use interface enabled our teams to quickly connect our digital environments to extract value from data residing in various systems.”
Paving the way for future digitalization
The journey of transformation never stops for HAECO Hong Kong. On top of meeting the immediate project timelines, the integration platform also paves the way for more digitalization initiatives.
With a modernized application integration platform and faster integration process, Chan added the company is also planning to modernize other legacy back-office systems, like the HR and financial applications. Moreover, the company is exploring repurposing data from different systems to drive a more consolidated data analytics initiative.
In addition to internal integration, the modernized application platform can support external integration with airline customers like Finnair. The companies are co-developing a data-sharing platform to share real-time maintenance status.
“It is an ongoing journey. There are many opportunities to drive more safe, efficient and intelligent operations. The ability to integrate different applications paves the way for more initiatives to come,” Chan concluded.
Sheila Lam is the contributing editor of CDOTrends. Covering IT for 20 years as a journalist, she has witnessed the emergence, hype, and maturity of different technologies but is always excited about what's next. You can reach her at [email protected].
Image credit: iStockphoto/SSS-Sony