Columbia Helicopters is the largest civil operator of the Boeing VTOLs and Chinooks in the US. In preparation for ongoing growth brought about by increasing stringency of the Federal Aviation Administration and the need for remote operations, Columbia Helicopters met with a need to streamline their maintenance management in all areas, from effective supply chain management, through to managing employee time and attendance for accurate costing and payroll purposes.

Ramco’s Aviation Solution is a completely web-centric, state-of-the art, fully integrated solution to these challenges, and the Columbia Helicopters team has configured this application to provide results that are optimized for their business. The application enables end-to-end integration from maintenance, to supply chain, to finance, and operations; while the Offline Field Maintenance Solution (OFS) enables remote location crew to update records in field bases and auto-sync all data from, and to, head office.

These aircraft have a very complex maintenance management and supply chain considerations, and through utilization of the application’s powerful features, the team is able to manage maintenance-due calculations for component usage alongside the comprehensive contract functions. This means that the MRO division can accurately track performance, customer inventory, and billing of any work done.

Columbia Helicopters now has a centralized IT management system and is equipped to track the MRO business through the order-to-cash cycle in one application, allowing better visibility and control of costs, ensuring accurate inventory from ‘nose to tail’, and benefi tting from increased effi ciency and communication on the ground, with their shops, hangars, and remote locations connected through integration. Columbia Helicopters said the Ramco Aviation Solution ‘has brought about technological readiness and set the standard for all future advances with ease and agility’.