Emirates Airline Switches on ULTRAMAIN Software

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., July 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Emirates Airline began use of ULTRAMAIN maintenance and integrated logistics software on June 2, 2008. ULTRAMAIN is developed by Ultramain Systems, Inc., (USI) of Albuquerque, NM, USA.

The new Maintenance and Engineering software system is highly integrated software that addresses most aspects of Emirates Engineering including Line and Base maintenance, Planning and Scheduling, Configuration Management, Quality Assurance, Maintenance Control, Materials Planning and Inventory Control, Purchasing, Component Management, Warehousing and Logistics, Back Shops Maintenance and the management of Maintenance Repair Organisation (MRO) for the Emirates maintenance facility in Dubai, one of the biggest and most advanced engineering facilities in the world.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080724/LATH028)

Muhammad Iqbal, Emirates Engineering IT Systems Manager, said: "Emirates selected Ultramain because of its impressive capabilities, its product flexibility, and USI's proven record of large scale software implementations."

Mr. Iqbal, who managed this project, added: "The software implementation included re-engineering of several business processes, a complex exercise which was facilitated by the capabilities of the new system. Emirates' fleet is expanding rapidly and our old system simply could not support what we wanted. Another large undertaking was the migration of existing historic data. We set up eleven milestones for data migration throughout the implementation. Each one had specific goals that had to be met. This allowed us to take manageable steps where each step led to the next larger step. The final GoLive data conversion went as planned and took four days of machine time -- twenty four hours a day. The switch-over from our old system to Ultramain was a very challenging task and it was achieved with the commitment, hard work and enthusiasm of the teams involved."

User training was another large challenge. Mr. Iqbal added: "The new system workflow was pre-planned, allowing training courses and user materials to be tailored to perfectly fit the intended use of the software by each user, as per their respective roles. Ultramain Systems produced the materials and then in conjunction with ourselves trained over 2500 users here in Dubai."

Another aspect of the implementation was the addition of software enhancements. "Even though we chose Ultramain due to its capabilities, we needed additional enhancements to fully meet our desired business processes. USI worked closely with us to identify, design and develop these additional capabilities," said Mr. Iqbal.

Ron Brown, Director of Customer Services for Ultramain Systems, and USI's Project Manager for the implementation, said: "The enhancements we developed for Emirates during this implementation have already been incorporated in the standard Ultramain software. This shifts ongoing support for these enhancements to Ultramain Systems and makes them available to other Ultramain sites. Too often customers must pay again to have their enhancement migrated to future releases. With Ultramain, that's not the case."

Based in Dubai, Emirates is one of the fastest growing airlines in the world. It currently operates services to 101 destinations in 62 countries across six continents.

With more than 400 international awards to its name, Emirates is renowned for its service excellence. The airline has a 117-strong fleet of modern, wide bodied aircraft and is the largest customer for the Airbus A380, having ordered 58 of the giant double-decker aircraft.

More information: http://www.emirates.com

Ultramain Systems is a leading provider of aviation maintenance and engineering software and can be reached at http://www.ultramain.com, +1-505-828-9000 or sales@ultramain.com.