Japanese aircraft engine manufacturer and maintenance provider IHI has transitioned to paperless MRO activities with the deployment of Rusada’s ENVISION software.

Headquartered in Tokyo, IHI’s Life Cycle Solution Division, Aero Engine, Space & Defence Business Area, focuses on the maintenance of V2500, GEnx, CF34, and PW1100G-JM engine components.

Previously, its maintenance teams used several spreadsheets and paper records to manage their library of task cards. This caused numerous issues such as the constant need to update task card data upon OEM maintenance manual revisions, and not having the ability to record inspection results on the cards themselves.

To overcome these issues, IHI chose to implement ENVISION’s Digital Task Card functionality.

Tomoyuki Chida, head of quality engineering group at the division of IHI, said: “Our previous process was far too time consuming and made it difficult for regulators to see the decisions we had made and why.

“With ENVISION now in place we can realise significant time savings, automatically validate task input, and provide our technicians with useful supporting information, all without the need for paper.”

The ENVISION software enables IHI to import manuals into the system, and then the task cards within are extracted and set up as digital records. Users can then customise those with additional fields and functions such as electronic signoffs, feedback capture, and alternate task procedures. When manuals are revised, the underlying task card data can be automatically updated while keeping any customised content intact.

Julian Stourton, chief executive at Rusada, said: “As a software provider it is always incredibly satisfying when we can take a very manual and time-consuming process and create functionality that can perform it in the blink of an eye.

“IHI’s willingness to adapt and their desire for continuous improvement is truly commendable and has made them the perfect early adopter of this functionality.”

(Picture above – V2500-E5 engine. Credit: Rusada)