Several years ago Flight Safety International joined Boeing’s flight and maintenance training organization to create FlightSafetyBoeing (FSB), later renamed Alteon. The company’s goal—to be the leader in the development and delivery of aircraft-related tr
by Site Staff
September 4, 2003
Tackling the Turbulence
Several years ago Flight Safety International joined Boeing’s flight and maintenance training organization to create FlightSafetyBoeing (FSB), later renamed Alteon. The company’s goal—to be the leader in the development and delivery of aircraft-related training worldwide. To do so, Alteon needed quick and efficient access to the most current and accurate knowledge about multiple types of aircraft.
A study conducted by Boeing and Alteon indicated that Alteon was spending millions of dollars annually to manage its documents and training materials, as well as to support the technical systems where this information resided. The organization also faced the challenge of keeping training materials current with information provided by various manufacturers across the globe. Sometimes training classes were delayed due to incorrect or late arriving documents. In addition, Alteon was looking to implement more detailed training and provide its customers flexibility in training schedules.
Moving On Up for Greater Altitude
Xerox Global Services came aboard to help tackle these challenges and recommended an enterprise content management and publishing solution to re-engineer Alteon’s document processes. Xerox began with a content assessment to understand how the appropriate training knowledge was created, revised and delivered to maintenance and support organizations. Because Alteon tailors each course to the unique characteristics of every aircraft, Xerox customized its content management solution to meet these specific requirements—creating a benchmark system.
Throughout the assessment process, Xerox experts were closely engaged with Alteon to understand the organization’s workflow, resulting in a content management solution for simplified global publishing access and delivery. By taking a look at day-to-day operations, the Xerox assessment phase also helped Alteon identify ways to reduce overall technology and document costs. For example, the original process of maintaining training detail and manuals unique to each aircraft required the use of approximately 21 different infrastructures within Alteon. Alteon is now able to integrate alternate technologies, including video, interactive CD and Internet-based training, through its content management solution, creating new offerings that drive revenue while reducing costs.
To bring the speed and major content transition Alteon required, Xerox also created a solution that will enable Alteon to transition from standard generalized markup language to extensible markup language (XML) for full Internet capacity—allowing training to be accessed easily and delivered quickly across the globe.
The solution enables Alteon the ability to further customize training manuals and “zero in” on certain parts of the training material, providing the ability for Alteon customers to order customized classes.
Rather than re-creating entirely new training documentation to support frequent changes, the Xerox solution enables Alteon to make revisions to content as they occur. As the need for global access is critical to the success of Alteon’s training initiative, the system supports multiple languages and provides the ability to print training materials on demand anywhere in the world.
Landing on a Global Solution
By working with Xerox Global Services, Alteon now brings a comprehensive and efficient learning experience that provides its customers the highest caliber of aircraft training. Now, unique requirements such as differences in qualification or recurrent training can be accommodated.
Almost every major airline company in the world that operates Boeing airplanes takes advantage of training from Alteon. These include commercial airlines, cargo carriers, corporations with air departments and the U.S. Department of Defense.
Alteon has reduced the time to assemble training manuals from seven hours to 20 minutes, providing the ability to train more customers and improve customer satisfaction. In addition, Alteon is realizing a major saving from support-and-maintenance cost reduction.
The result: a complete end-to-end solution for document quality control with the flexibility of accommodating constantly changing training documentation.
Larry Wash is vice president, Managed Services Operation, Xerox Global Services. Xerox Global Services helps companies streamline and digitize their document-intensive business processes such as customer communications, billing, training or records management. Xerox Global Services’ consultants work closely with clients to identify, quantify and realize hidden opportunities to save money, find new sources of value and simplify how work gets done.