In Stay Sharp Episode 127, Boxes on the Plane: Lessons from a PDF Migration to PLM, co-hosts Jonathan Scott and Juliann Grant welcome Aaron Lane, PLM lead at Duncan Aviation. He shares what happens when the rubber meets the runway in Duncan’s journey from paper to PLM, as well as the ups and downs they’ve experienced along the way.
Duncan’s Unique Role and Needs
Duncan does “everything you can do to a private jet aircraft, we just don’t build them from scratch,” Aaron explains. From new engines or interior furnishings to repair work, maintenance, and fuel, to consignment, parts sourcing, or maintenance records tracking, Duncan Aviation handles anything you need for your private jet. But their “product” is service more than anything. Though they sell parts and goods, “it’s to provide service to the customer,” he says. “They have a problem, they have a want, they have a need, they come to Duncan. We provide the service.”
Aaron Lane, Duncan Aviation
Since their move from a product data management (PDM) platform, they’ve relied on Aras Innovator PLM to manage, maintain, and use every bit of that information. “It’s not data that we generated. It comes at us,” he says. “Taking care, tracking, and keeping up all of that vendor data is another unexpected benefit of bringing Innovator on board.” Another game-changer Innovator has delivered is its ability to search the PDFs and readable files in the repository, which is critical, because there’s no single naming convention across all of that data.
Be sure to check out Stay Sharp Episode 127: Boxes on the Plane: Lessons from a PDF Migration to PLM and join us each week for a new podcast.
Because of that unique role, Duncan requires specific capabilities in a PLM. Aaron admits the learning curve has been steep on what they need, but through their current implementations in engineering and certification, they’re housing CAD data, substantiation data (i.e., reports and analyses), approval workflows, and change management processes. In addition, as the primary purveyor of a lot of different products for private jets—everything from engine maintenance parts to very fancy light switches—Duncan must house the terabytes of technical data they receive to support all of those products. This “uncontrolled customer data,” comes to them in a wide variety of formats, everything from 3D step files and 2D drawings or documentation to jpegs of a brochure and anything else in between.
An unexpected benefit of Innovator has been collecting, managing, and using information about how civil aviation authorities in some 30 other countries around the world work. “We’re finding ways to really capture that tribal knowledge and make it searchable,” Aaron says. Innovator makes it possible to comb the archives for the company’s institutional knowledge, instead of having to ask Mary or Bob down the hall if they remember something.
The Journey to PLM
Like everything else, Duncan Aviation’s journey started with paper. “Then we had spreadsheets about spreadsheets that were organizing our spreadsheets to keep track of all this stuff,” Aaron says. He details Duncan’s research and selection process, noting that the ability to do their own work on the platform was important to them, though they also realized at some point that they can’t do it all themselves. That’s where Razorleaf came in, supporting them with customizations and a purpose-built tool. A key to their success is a cohesive team that can make clear-eyed decisions about what needs to happen—whether it’s software selection, in-house customization, or external support. Aaron explains, “We get the right people together and we make a decision and then we tell our bosses what it’s going to cost and hope they don’t say no.”
Lessons and Advice
Aaron closes with some of the collected wisdom he’s gleaned from Duncan’s projects. First, he counsels others to make a list of what you think you want and compare it with teammates and coworkers to refine it—being sure to include what hasn’t worked previously—and write it all down. Another point he makes is you have to figure out governance. Be clear on who’s going to oversee the system and who’s going to change it. Put a plan in place for roles and responsibilities before the new platform comes in-house. Give the team that’s supporting the product time to do so, and make sure you have training and a training environment for people to learn with. Lastly, be sure to talk to people. “Conversation, conversation, conversation,” he says. “As with all parts of life, you’ve just got to communicate and pick people’s brains and see what it is they think they need and what they think they want.”
Learn More About Duncan Aviation and PLM
The full podcast contains more discussion and details on a variety of topics, including what Duncan Aviation’s next steps with Innovator will be, how they plan to capture and automate the knowledge of what templates are required for which kinds of projects, what else you can learn about Duncan’s PLM implementation in Razorleaf’s Duncan Aviation case study, and more.
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