PLIP

The Challenge

Descriptive and illustrated technical documentation comprises a mass of individual technical data and meta-information. Taking aircrafts into service and keeping them in operation results in a requirement for a significant amount of additional corresponding spare parts data not only for the aircraft manufacturer, but also the suppliers of individual systems (e.g. cargo loading systems, air conditioning, avionics, engines, etc.), and the manufacturers of units and unit components. The task of organizing this great variety of data and ensuring commonality of different data in various display formats necessitates optimized tools and software and processes that are finely tuned to each other. These tools and processes are important for the punctual availability of the data, fulfilling of the requirement for re-use of the data over a longer period of time, or in the various fields of authoring, illustration and data handling and for use in new technologies (SGML/XML).

Plip2 – The Solution

The first version of our PLIP2 software fulfilled the requirements of administrating authoring, illustration and spares data in a database and the generation of various display formats from this source. Our aspiration to administrate the ever increasing data volume, the need for access via internet or VPN and the increasing number of internal and external users have made a redesign of our application, and of the database working in the background, inevitable.

Our software PLIP2 is not just a collection of new or enhanced functions, hence the internal design, from data input to the finished extract, has been completely reworked to optimize company internal processes with respect to re-use and quality. This reduces the manpower requirement and improves the quality of the data. In addition "inexperienced" users of our software are assisted by the context sensitive help function.

Our Technological Progress

The redesign includes reorganization of the database structure from a file based database system to the SQL environment ORACLE. The client has also been redesigned to suit the new Plip2 features. During the development of Plip2 we were careful to use the latest 4GL programming environment and tools in order to profit from the Rapid Application Development cost and time optimization during future adaptations. The use of ORACLE 10G ensures maximum availability, secure database structures, excellent performance, processing of large data volumes and is already furnished with the integrated GRID Computing for future upgrades.

A logical consequence in the development of the new database structures was the uncompromizing fulfilling of our requirement for maximum reusability of all possible data and structures over the widest number of levels. Reusability is thus not just reduced to use for PNR basis data,but also for assemblies and on up to manuals. This means that the manpower required to compile manuals, and in particular that required to incorporate future revisions, is minimized, and unwanted, synonym spellings can be ruled out from the start.

Your data

The integrated import and export interfaces based on XML also enable automatic communication with your merchandise management systems. An integrated version monitor can compare all data from the original up to the present and can index these correspondingly. This enables an extract for T/S-Files, RSPL, Procurement Data (PDC, Price Catalog, Procurement Planning) and IPL/IPC data (Detailed Parts Lists, EDI, Numerical Index, Optional Vendor Part Index und Vendor List) to be made at any time, in accordance with ATA requirements, including the revision marker. We have kept the extracts of the various data variable so that these can be processed in SGML/XML documents and used in conventional documents or prepared for transfer to aircraft manufacturers. The aircraft manufacturer specific data extract, such as the Airbus CDF are realized in various output formats (e.g. ASCII, PDF, Print).

 

TD&DS and Plip2 – we manage your data.

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