DAE has taken control of more than 2 million records and delivered a new level of speed and accuracy for sales and trading teams as they collect, share, and transfer large packages of asset documentation, including maintenance, compliance, inspection audits, and lease transfers with airline customers. The DAE team completed 18 aircraft transitions in just the first six months after implementing the ATS.

DAE leases its $16B USD fleet of 425 advanced Boeing, ATR and Airbus aircraft to more than 108 operators in 52 countries. This modern, fuel-efficient fleet helps airlines reduce their carbon footprint, and DAE’s comprehensive decommissioning strategy ensures older aircraft are disposed of in a sustainable manner. Operational efficiency and waste reduction is another important component of the company’s environmental strategy.
 
Managing this number of leased assets is no simple task. In addition to the sheer volume of maintenance documentation, DAE and airline operators must share information for aircraft transition and compliance purposes across the life of the asset. Siloed data across multiple systems or locations creates bottlenecks and inefficiencies, which impacts delivery of information to customers.
 
When DAE first came to GE Digital, the team had digitized part of its information, but the platform was both out of date and discontinued in terms of future development and support. For the sales and trading teams, this meant more time and effort required to respond to customers with accurate information. From a document security standpoint, hundreds of thousands of paper records could be at risk in the event of a flood or fire.
 
DAE IT Program Director, Nick Lowe, was tasked with finding a new solution to help modernize DAE’s asset documentation process.

The solution had to bring all technical records into a single document management system to support the latest international regulatory standards for transmitting documents between lessors and operators. With documents spanning many years, DAE wanted to provide users with quick, efficient access to these documents in a way they hadn’t experienced before.
 
After analyzing several systems available in the market, DAE selected GE Digital’s Asset Transfer System (ATS) to manage its records and project management requirements.
 
Part of GE Aerospace's Asset Records portfolio, the ATS software is designed to make it easier for operators to digitize, index, and archive aircraft maintenance records with a cloud-based solution.  This helps drive efficiencies for both the airline and lessors throughout the life of an asset to include aircraft deliveries, annual inspection audits, compliance, and asset transitions.
 
With the fully integrated Records and Project Management modules, operators can realize efficiency gains such as digital auditing, storage, and document search during the lease period while helping to optimize the exchange and review of asset records at the end of the lease period.  Powered by Microsoft Azure, it is designed to operate with minimal additional IT infrastructure so organizations can connect through secure web-based access.

“And to ensure our team can access records with speed and accuracy, our process must be digital, backed up, restorable, and integrate seamlessly with our existing asset management systems. GE Digital’s ATS software supports our innovation goals and represents a significant step in our governance of records,” said Lowe.

DAE Supports Customers with Streamlined, Optimized Processes
 
During the bulk data migration, GE Digital moved more than 1.8 million DAE documents into the ATS application. Along the way, members of the DAE records department took the opportunity to identify document structure inconsistencies and standardize the file structure. Since go-live in 2021, DAE employees and technical consultants have loaded nearly a quarter million additional documents into ATS.
 
With positive feedback from end users, DAE has been using the ATS software to maintain checklists, manage permissions, search, and retrieve documents, and share and transfer large packages of documents.  Project management functions are streamlined for every kind of asset transition – from asset deliveries, inspection audits, shop visits, asset sales, or transitions and returns.
 
For the sales and trading team members, pre-configured checklists make opening a new project fast and easy. Checking on the status of an active job is simple as well, with details about asset returns, stakeholder information and overall project progress available in a concise view. When the checklist is complete and all documentation is captured, the records package is transferred securely and seamlessly to DAE customers.
 
“Our records management team was eager to embrace the solution and has already completed 18 aircraft transitions in the first six months,” said Goodson. 

According to Lowe, the real value of ATS is the speed and efficiency in serving customers. “When an airline wants to investigate the opportunity to lease one of our aircraft, our sales and trading teams need to react at a moment’s notice,” said Lowe. “Using ATS we can serve up records quickly, and we also have all the records back to birth if the customer requests them.”   
 
In parallel, the team is digitizing a wealth of archival data around previously owned aircraft to ensure the information is available for insurers and for audit purposes.
 
DAE and GE Aerospace, Software Partner with an Innovation Mindset
 
While the features and benefits of the GE Aerospace's ATS software fit DAE’s needs from a technical perspective, the relationship — working together to achieve DAE’s goals — has been a game changer. With an aggressive implementation timeline that included some special configuration to fit DAE’s business and security requirements, flexibility and teamwork were paramount. 
 
“We look for partners that understand what we are trying to achieve,” said Marti McGovern, SVP Technical Services at DAE.

“It’s rewarding to collaborate with customers to make the airline industry operate more efficiently. DAE told us to expect a lot of interaction and idea exchange, and they haven’t disappointed,” said Andrew Coleman, General Manager for GE Aerospace's Software business.  “Our joint team is working together to deliver a continuous loop of improvement not only for DAE, but for future users of our ATS software, as well.”