Mobile Solution for the Maintenance of the Hamburg Airport

Since already a couple of years clavis has pursued the development of applications to connect mobile processes to SAP R/3. These efforts have been promoted by the federal state’s Bremen programme for innovative technologies, ‘ Bremen-in-time ’. In a pilot project clavis could enlist the Hamburg airport as customer for its mobile solution.

The Starting Situation

Main focus of the project was the maintenance of the Hamburg Airport . The following were the essential requirements:

  • Development of a simple and mobile application to enter and process order data into the SAP R/3 module PM
  • Integration of further mobile processes like withdrawal of planned and unplanned orders and the entry of group based damage or reason codes

A primary goal of these activities was to reduce the entry effort significantly.

The Implementation

For the processes ‘planned maintenance’ and ‘unplanned maintenance’ a batch processing (offline/asynchronous data recording) was considered as appropriate respectively sufficient. Opticon's bar code scanner PHL2700 has been chosen as input unit. Main advantage of this gadget for instance is its manageability, the little weight, as well as its robustness and its suitability for usage in contaminated environments. Additionally it is able to understand bar code as well as RFID transponder.

In a first step clavis worked out the functional specification together with the customer staff. This document contained an analysis of the existing processes and the starting points for their optimisation. The result was to replace the complex manual data entry processes by scanner based data entry. For this purpose clavis uses to employ prefix bar codes or RFID transponders that are able to start and regulate the processes intelligently. As bar code scanner the Opticon PHL2700 has been chosen, for he seemed to be the best fit because of its manageability, its robustness, and its functionality.

To map the existing working process exactly with the corresponding IT process, each working step was analysed and resolved into its data elements. For the processes ‘planned maintenance’ and ‘unplanned maintenance’ a asynchronous data recording was considered as appropriate. After the system has been customised 90% of the input can be matched with preconfigured data in the mobile entry device. The scanner, the process and the user data are combineded to complete data records by the clavis proprietary application clavisMobile and transferred to SAP R/3 per BAPI and Call Transaction.

The Effect

Already the test run of the new system did the cost of airport maintenance could be reduced significantly. Further on the entry process was extremely more comfortable the staff, and the working processes had to be restructured only slightly. Thus the changes and the new technology were accepted by the staff to a high degree. Today complex processes are recorded by easy and fast scanning of only few data.

The Prospect

Meanwhile we have extended the Hamburg airport maintenance application for the usage of PDA scanners and for data transfer via GPRS or WLAN. And the maximum input time is still well below 15 seconds.

If your company is interested in a clavisMobile solution, we offer you an orientation workshop including a specific consultation and the conception of a functional sheet.