Maintenance Tracking Program

[kootenay]

All you maintenance guru's out there ...

 

Looking for a reasonably priced tracking program.

I've looked at a lot of them but when it comes to $$ they break my budget.

5 machine max. tracking

AD, SB alerts would be nice

Purchase order module also would be nice.

 

My excel spreadsheet needs a total make over.

 

Anyone have a smooth running spreadsheet they wouldn't mind sharing?

Running Bell206B3, R-44II, AS350B2

 

Thanks in Advance

[Batiskaf]

I would recommend Aircraft Maintenance System in Quebec

[drkrider]

I'd second the Aircraft Maintenance Systems software we've being using it for two years now. It's good value for the money.

 

Sean

[Heliian]

Personally I think the user interface for AMS is terrible, too many windows and windows pop up everytime you want to change screens and it's always loading or saving something. It spits out a lot of paper that looks nice but it's overly redundant. My favorite is winair but it's pricey. have you looked into CALM systems? They offer trials and tutorials on their website and I think it's cheaper than AMS. best of luck

 

I

[kootenay]

Personally I think the user interface for AMS is terrible, too many windows and windows pop up everytime you want to change screens and it's always loading or saving something. It spits out a lot of paper that looks nice but it's overly redundant. My favorite is winair but it's pricey. have you looked into CALM systems? They offer trials and tutorials on their website and I think it's cheaper than AMS. best of luck

 

I

 

Heliian

Thanks for the tip. Took a look at Winair and yes big $$.

After reading through their material and talking by phone it lead me to MPlan.

This company makes ATA Aircraft templates, but only work with Winair.

 

Does anyone know of a company that makes up these aircraft ATA templates.

Thinking this may solve my problem at least in part.

 

Thanks

[swede]

Stay away from CALM. Horrible interface. Clumsy to navigate through. Way to easy for anyone to mess things up BAD. trust me I will vouch for how easy you can create lots of work for yourself. F'ing CALM. We are in the process of getting rid of it.

 

Personally I think the user interface for AMS is terrible, too many windows and windows pop up everytime you want to change screens and it's always loading or saving something. It spits out a lot of paper that looks nice but it's overly redundant. My favorite is winair but it's pricey. have you looked into CALM systems? They offer trials and tutorials on their website and I think it's cheaper than AMS. best of luck

 

I

[Heli500]

I think Heliian is messing with you, I have never heard of anyone recommending Winair. If you add Winair to your company, you will need another person to your staff to input all of the data required to keep everything up to date. Just started at a company and inherited the program, I hate the f'n task cards. Doing a 300 hr requires you to print out 80 sheets of paper!

 

For a 5 aircraft fleet I would just get someone really good at excel to audit your aircraft, books and spreadsheets. I used to use Compucrap to track my inventory and cut POs and a spreadsheet to do everything else. It was simple, cheap and worked. It just looked circa 1987. Not recommending it, but it got the job done.

 

Personally I find Spreadsheets to be the easiest thing to work with and update, everything is right there in your face, but then you really have to know what you are doing when it comes to updating parts that have multiple parameters tracked. The last place I worked I linked the whole WO process and maintenance tracking spreadsheet into one .xls workbook then locked it out so all you could update were the current times and give it a work order number.

 

Now I wish Winair was that simple

 

cheers

[Guest 47yrLowTimer]

When the indusrty went for a dive in the 90's I got into programming databases. As I am trying to get back into the right seat. I'm open to suggestions.

[okkman]

For a reasonably priced and easy to use program I would suggest Fleet Status 2. Although it's not as advanced as some of the pricier packages, it does a really good job for our small fleet (less than 10 aircraft). We have been using it for years and have even made changes to the program itself simply by suggesting them to the company. Very capable and easy to use with a small learning curve.

 

http://www.fleetstatus2.com/

 

Eric

[Heliian]

To Heli500,

 

You must not be using the same type of set up that I did. Once you have the template in Winair, you can add all of the supplemental inspections for installed components onto the one task card with the inspection forms attached. for example, a 100hr inspection in winair would consist of one task card for the inspection with all of the checksheets attached which include the supplemental inspections specific to that particular a/c, no more pages filled with N/A and maybe another for the engine stuff. I'm now using AMS and for a 100hr a/f and engine inspection with supplemental inspections, I have 34 seperate task cards, 3 pages engine check sheets and 8 a/f check sheets. Because we have no access to the ams program in the field, I have to fill in all of the task cards manually.

 

Obviously Winair would not be suitable for this gentleman but when used to it's full extent, you can go paperless with it. Also, ams doesn't link anything together, when a component is changed, each tracking inspection(o/h, insp, ret) has to be corrected seperately.