SAP’s maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) suite for ERP is one of the industry's most robust and comprehensive software packages. Company executives, though, are the first to admit that some maintenance technicians, planners and engineers could be put off by the program’s sometimes complex, full-featured functionality.
The SAP MRO solution was designed that way to follow a life cycle process orientation scenario that is particularly suited to complex operations, such as airlines that maintain their own planes and also conduct third-party maintenance. As such, it addresses line maintenance, hangar operations, engine overhaul, component repair, spares and rotable management, traceability, performance compliance and configuration checks, customer support, configuration management, fleet management, financials, supply chain management, human capital management and performance-based contracting.
“Though organically grown and very stable, SAP MRO has evolved to the point where we were a bit complex, especially for some casual end users,” said Greg Huntington, industry principal in SAP’s Aerospace, Defense & Airline practice.
Now, SAP has addressed that issue with the introduction of a simplified user interface that is tightly tied to all SAP MRO functions. Developed by Axon Solutions, the world’s largest SAP-only consultancy, the new enhanced product is called iMRO.
The new capabilities of iMRO will be available in October. iMRO is an add on to SAP MRO, and customers don’t have to purchase any extra hardware to run the maintenance software. Future releases of the iMRO solution will be linked with SAP’s Enhancement Pack release strategy.
“iMRO gives users visibility as to location and disposition of every component and subassembly as it works it way through a maintenance organization or when it’s farmed out to another vendor,” explained Richard Minney, Axon iMRO solution architect. “iMRO makes the process tighter and easier for a broader group of end users to play their part in the maintenance process.”
For example, with the standard SAP MRO product, an engine inspection and tear down resulting in approximately 200 parts and subassemblies would require as many as 5 or 6 transactions to determine the disposition (repair, replace, scrap, etc.) of each one of those parts. With iMRO, only one transaction is necessary, with all the data brought together on one screen and accompanied by vital ancillary information like asset history and warranty data.
“iMRO keeps all documents linked together,” explained Minney.
With this agreement, SAP is able to roll out the iMRO piece as a mature and proven product quickly to customers like Goodrich said Huntington. “It adds new capabilities and creates a more simplified and better experience for the end user… and the co-development aspect ensures that future iMRO enhancements are synchronized with the SAP MRO development roadmap.”
iMRO is provided as a specialized industry add-on by Axon, developed using the SAP NetWeaver platform. This approach capitalizes on lessons learned from more than 100 previous SAP solution-based MRO installations, and reduces data incompatibility, and system interface complexity and cost as compared to bolting a standalone niche MRO application onto a generic enterprise platform.
Integration, as well as cost visibility, performance measurement and electronic maintenance record management, is intended to help both third-party and internal maintenance and engineering organizations realize greater benefits and to deploy world-class MRO applications faster, better and using less resources.
Click here to download the MRO Whitepaper
