Airbus

The challenge

A document management system was required to manage approved engineering data, such as the CAD/CAM drawings and bills of materials required for the design and manufacture of passenger aircraft. Almost three million documents had to be migrated from the legacy solution to the new system. The huge volume of data to be processed, the need to tightly integrate the system with a number of operating systems and processes, and the high demand for quality posed a significant challenge. The DMS system is effectively the nerve center of aircraft production. This means that a system outage would result in a serious delay in production. In addition, ensuring that archives cannot be changed or edited is very important for an aircraft manufacturer like Airbus - especially with regard to product liability legislation. T-Systems took on the challenge of meeting these demands.

The T-Systems solution

T-Systems was selected by Airbus as a longterm and reliable partner largely because it can enable design data to be archived securely and reliably for at least 30 years - and once archived, the files cannot be manipulated. Based on its ImageMaster DMS system, T-Systems planned and implemented a document management solution that met all these requirements. The T-Systems teams also installed ImageMaster at 16 sites across Europe. The networks linking the servers at the various sites will also be operated by T-Systems, which is rare for this industry. The T-Systems solution combines IT and telecommunications solutions, because these servers exchange documents using Deutsche Telekom data lines. Mobile access to the documents via cell phone is also planned. This is particularly useful for maintenance engineers, who often require information while they are working on aircraft - without access to a PC. In addition, T-Systems also provides a hotline and support services.

Customer benefits

By implementing the ImageMaster standard software from T-Systems, Airbus can reduce its long-term development, maintenance and operating costs to a fraction of their former levels. The innovative long-term archiving solution allows Airbus to meet the criteria laid down by product liability legislation. In addition, Airbus benefits from Europe-wide access to its documentation and from encrypted data transfer to its worldwide partners. The solution fully satisfies the company’s high requirements as regards reliability, security and performance.