BAE
Systems is an international company engaged in the development, delivery, and
support of advanced defence and aerospace systems in the air, on land, at sea,
and in space. The Company designs,
manufactures, and supports military aircraft, combat vehicles, surface ships,
submarines, radar, avionics, communications, electronics, and guided weapon
systems. It is a pioneer in technology
with a heritage stretching back hundreds of years and is at the forefront of
innovation, working to develop the next generation of intelligent defence
systems. BAE Systems has major
operations across five continents and customers in some 130 countries.
Successful implementation project
wins prestigious award
Software from AEB has enabled the CS&S team to
obtain real-time visibility of shipment information and keep tighter controls
on shipment costs. In 2005, the AEB software
project project was awarded the prestigious Chairman’s Bronze Award for
Innovation from BAE Systems in recognition of the significant improvement in
business processes that the solution has helped to bring about. Ian Womersley,
Export Control Team Group Leader, has said that: “The system has provided a
complete solution for the creation and electronic storage of export
documentation while minimizing data entry and providing our customers with
up-to-date statistics and shipment information.”
When BAE
Systems’ CS&S were faced with a substantial projected increase in the level
of exports they handled for production projects, it was clear that their
existing systems, procedures, processes and resources weren‘t adequate to meet
the future workload. They therefore looked for a new solution to meet their
current and future requirements and opted for a solution from AEB’s Export Management portfolio.
The
company’s Customer Solutions & Support (CS&S) business uses an AEB’s Export Management system to help it fulfil its role in providing tailored
through-life support and service solutions for current and future defence
systems. This includes the worldwide export of major components, spares and
repaired items for various aircraft systems.
New software enables radical changes
to business processes
The
introduction of the new system enabled the CS&S Export Control Team to
restructure their management of export shipments and significantly increase
efficiency. In a recent magazine article, Ian Womersley, Export Control Team
Group Leader, said: “The system gave us the opportunity to radically change our
processes.” This was a very important step for the team as they had substantial
export commitments to meet.
The core
of the ASSIST4 system implemented with BAE Systems’ CS&S business is
focused on producing and storing Shipping
and Export Filing
documentation. One of the key requirements of BAE Systems was that the software
should be able to generate the full range of Customs, commercial and transportation
documents necessary for their business and that the documentation could be
stored electronically in a non-editable format.
Following
an analysis of BAE Systems’ requirements a software solution was implemented
that included elements of AEB’s Shipping, Export Filing,
Statistics and Document Management System range of functionality.
Working towards a paperless office
All Shipping
and Export Filing
documentation can now be produced in a short space of time and each document is
populated with the necessary export licence information where appropriate.
Significantly, each document is then automatically stored in non-editable
optical format in AEB’s Document Management System. Retrieving, displaying and
printing any of these documents at a later date is simple and can be done in a
matter of seconds from any PC on the network.
Documents
that haven’t originated in AEB’s software (e.g. airway bills) can also be
scanned into the system and stored with appropriate search indices. As all the
documents can be stored for many years in revision-secure format (meaning that
they can’t be edited once saved in the archive), the CS&S team were
recently able to secure an agreement from HM Customs that paper documentation
would no longer need to be retained - a great step forward towards the
paperless office!
Automatic processes to reduce
time-consuming manual entry
As part
of the software from AEB
that was implemented, BAE Systems are also making use of the Communication
Management System (ACMS). This particular module is a sophisticated data
conversion hub which can take data from any one system and convert it into a
format that can be understood by another. For BAE Systems, this has enabled the
company to take Intrastat and product data from the AEB Export Management package and output this data in a format that can be read
into their import system. Previously, this had been a time-consuming manual
process. Crucially, this now all runs automatically without the need for user
intervention.
Moving ahead with Phase II
Given the
success of the original implementation it will come as no surprise that BAE
Systems have opted to build on the AEB solution portfolio to meet some of their other business
requirements. In the upcoming Phase II project, the company is looking to add
modules from the area of Carrier Connect, Transport & Freight Management, and Export License Management modules to the existing system.
With the commencement of
Phase II, BAE Systems has demonstrated its continued trust in AEB’s business solutions. The enhanced system will undoubtedly extend the
CS&S team’s capabilities to meet the future challenges of supporting
prestige export contracts in a complex business environment.