Introduction
X-Hive Corporation's Aircraft Maintenance Documentation System is an advanced integrated system for managing and delivering aircraft documentation.
AMDS consists of 2 main parts:
AMDS-CMS: an integrated system for importing, managing, authoring and
publishing Maintenance Tasks, Job Cards, Engineering Orders as well as
Structured an unstructured Manuals.
AMDS-DS: a class 5 IETP for delivering Job Cards, Maintenance Visits and Maintenance Manual content.
AMDS is based on the new S1000D V3.0 standard for civil and military aviation which brings essential business benefits for airlines and slashes costs significantly in the hangar as well as at the gate.
AMDS comes with a full conversion utility to convert legacy manuals from the existing ATA Spec 2200 standard into the new ATA S1000D 3.0 standard. This enables airlines to use a single integrated system for a mixed fleet environment for content management as well as content delivery today.
Importing Content
AMDS-CMS provides a range of import utilities depending on the content type. All import utilities are available through a batch importer as well as through the GUI.
Importing Structured Manuals
Structured manuals in the S1000D format can be imported directly into the system. AMDS is Boeing 787 ready, the first commercial aircraft that will be delivered with documentation in the S1000D format.
Structured manuals compliant to the ATA Spec 2200 standard will be converted during the import. This conversion process is a full automatic process which can be used to process revisions as well. Spec 2200 manuals will be broken down into S1000D data modules where e.g. an AMM maintenance task will become an S1000D data module.
All content is stored in the central repository of AMDS-CMS.
Importing Unstructured Manuals
Many aircraft manuals, especially component manuals ,are not structured today. Typically they are PDF files or TIFF images. AMDS has an import process to split unstructured manuals, extract meta data, OCR the content and store it in a semi-structured way according to the S1000D standard.
Extracting the content from an unstructured manual and storing it in a structured form allows you to search over unstructured content and change only parts of the original manual.
Graphics in any format can be imported into AMDS-CMS. AMDS-CMS fully supports formats such as CGM, SVG, TIFF, PNG, JPG etc. Any mime type can be registered with the system.
Storing content
During the import all content is stored in a central repository. All content in the central repository is versioned (with branching), including images, schema's, XML content, unstructured manuals, stylesheets etc. The AMDS versioning system ensures full tracing and tracking and the ability to revert to older versions of any content.
Extensive Search dialogs
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Search for data analysis or authoring
AMDS-CMS has extensive search capability for maintenance program tasks, job cards, engineering projects, graphics,
structured manuals and unstructured manuals. Searches can be executed, refined and stored.
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Boolean expressions
With AMDS-CMS specialists can specify over 200 search criteria. Searches can be refined and exported.
AMDS-CMS supports full text search with boolean expressions and wild cards.
Besides the standard search functionality specialists can define XQuery reports.
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Search results
Searches can be used for subject matter experts for data analysis or by authors to start the authoring process directly from the search result.
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Authoring Maintenance Program Tasks
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Advanced browser interface
AMDS-CMS uses advanced browser forms to author maintenance tasks. Task authoring is significantly simplified by server side lookup from database tables for Reference Origin Type, Parts, Tools, Configurations, Skills, Zones, Panels, Circuit breakers, User attributes, Group and Tail effectivity, Failure effect categories etc.
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Integrates with legacy systems
AMDS-CMS bridges with legacy systems to integrate maintenance documentation with legacy content
e.g. to enrich part information with stock data. A generic API is offered to integrate any legacy system with AMDS-CMS.
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Effectivity
Task effectivity can be applied by server side lookups from definition files in the database.
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Authoring Job Cards
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Advanced Wysiwyg User Interface
AMDS-CMS has a full-blown Wysiwyg interface for job card authoring. Besides the Wysiwyg mode, structured
authoring is offered with drag and drop support. Many helper dialogs with database-driven lookups
support the author in building job cards more efficiently.
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Advanced content re-use
AMDS-CMS enables re-use of content such as standard texts, cautions, warnings, notes or any
fragment from maintenance manuals supplied by the OEM. Job card authors see the entire job card
in the authoring environment while re-using fragments from other documents which are clearly defined
by a highlighted background. Typically over 95% of the job cards within an airline contain standard texts, standard
warnings, cautions and notes. With AMDS-CMS these standard texts are maintained only once and re-used anywhere.
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Positional Cards
AMDS-CMS fully supports positional job cards where positional card have their own preliminary requirements
but fully re-use content from the master positional card. Typically over 20% of the job cards are positional
cards which now have to be authored only once instead of keeping redundant copies.
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Associate Maintenance Tasks
AMDS-CMS associates maintenance program tasks with job cards. Job cards authors can therefore significantly improve
their efficiency since support dialogs are available to select information from the associated task only.
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Tail Effectivity, Location Effectivity, Company Effectivity
Anywhere in the content of the job card effectivity filtering might be applied. Effectivity filtering
is not limited to Tail effectivity. Location specific filtering, Company specific filtering etc might apply as well.
AMDS-CMS effectivity filtering eliminates the need to maintain multiple job cards for various locations, executing parties etc.
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Authoring Engineering Projects
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Service Bulletin conversion
Incoming service bulletins from OEM's are automatically converted into job cards which can then be authored
using the rich authoring environment for work sections within the Engineering Project.
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Bulk Authoring
Bulk editing of all the underlying engineering cards for an engineering order significantly reduces the time
to select tools, parts etc.
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Wysiwyg Engineering Card Authoring
AMDS-CMS offers a wysiwyg and a structured authoring view for engineering cards.
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Authoring Data Modules
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Full support for S1000D
AMDS-CMS fully supports the S1000D schema's. Rich authoring tools are available for all content types.
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Authoring Graphics
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Embed photos and video in your job cards and manuals
AMDS-CMS goes beyond graphics, any mime type can be authored in AMDS-CMS. Like all content rich media
objects are fully versioned in the central repository. Any authoring tool can be used for any media type.
Support for rich content finally allows job card authors to embed photos, video, sound bytes etc in their
job cards.
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Batch Authoring
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Adding or Removing Tails
Special dialogs are available for batch updates of tails. When tails are added or removed only the batch
update is run, rather than going over the content one by one.
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Regulatory Required Reports
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Regulatory report capabilities
AMDS-CMS has built in report capabilities to run regulatory required reports against the maintenance program.
Besides regulatory required reports, several maintenance program reports are available for analysis purposes.
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Publishing content
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Automatic publishing of modified job cards
After setting a job card to "reviewed" an automatic publishing process to the delivery system is executed.
The delivery system is updated only with the changed content. Automatic delivery ensures that the delivery system
is always up-to-date without any human intervention.
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Publishing of all related content of re-used fragments
When standard texts or re-used fragments are modified, a complete re-publish of all related content can be executed.
This ensures that the delivery system received updates of all cards and manual content that is affected by
a change in a standard procedure, caution, text, note etc without needing to search and update individual
documents.
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Workflow
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Automatic workflow generation for reviewing related content
When maintenance tasks are modified, they can have an effect on existing job cards. Upon checking in a
change to a maintenance task, an automatic workflow process is generated notifying job card authors to
review relevant job cards related to the changed maintenance task.
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(Re)viewing Cards, Tasks, Engineering Projects, Manuals
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Previewing content
AMDS-CMS offers quick preview functions to see how the content would be used in various applications.
Applicability can be set during the preview function to see how the content is used in different contexts.
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Draft publishing
AMDS-CMS has a built-in publishing engine which can publish content in draft and finalized content in various formats
such as HTML and PDF.
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Unstructured Manuals
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Automatic conversion of unstructured manuals from PDF to S1000D
AMDS-CMS has a built in conversion utility to convert unstructured manuals from PDF to an S1000D structure.
Table of contents structures are generated, unstructured manuals are split into single-page PDF's which
made searchable through automatically generated meta data documents.
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Revision processing
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Import and decomposition
Revisions from OEM's are processed. In the case of ATA Spec 2200 content the incoming revision is split into
fragments and new revisions are imported in the content repository
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Conflict resolution
As part of the revision process a difference report is produced. AMDS-CMS has a conflict resolution tool
to merge changes from the OEM and the airline in a side-by-side comparison dialog.
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Process Data Module Implementation
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Advanced Fault analysis
AMDS-CMS has a complete implementation of the S1000D Process Data Module which allows engineers to
built interactive fault analysis dialogs which are capable of gathering data.
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