Communications Software
OASES is Amongst the Most Successful Aviation Engineering and Maintenance Systems in the World

Airline Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) systems are indispensable to ensure aircraft are maintained in pre-determined conditions of airworthiness to securely transport passengers and cargo. In an industry governed by the strict directives of the regulatory agencies, an MRO IT system has become a mandatory requirement, covering scheduled maintenance tasks and inspections, parts compliance and reliability, unscheduled tasks and airworthiness directives, alongside maintaining comprehensive reporting to the various stakeholders. Communications Software’s OASES (Open Aviation Strategic Engineering System) is amongst the most successful aviation engineering and maintenance systems in the world. Founded as a software house in 1971, Communications Software (Airline Systems) Limited (Commsoft) has been continually developing its MRO IT system, OASES, with active participation of the users, ensuring it is up-to-date with the latest industry demands and technological progress. “When I founded the company with my late partner Dick Rawcliffe, it was our vision to create a professional organization based on principles of honesty, quality, service and friendliness that would face the test of time,” says Gary Pollak, Co-founder and Chairman, Commsoft. “Today, the OASES community includes more than 100 aviation customers around the world, ranging from national carriers and large third-party maintenance providers to small independent operators of corporate aircraft and specialist roles aircraft.”

OASES is able to track every transaction by its work content, comprising of labor costs by specific trades/skills and all materials usage, thus offering extensive audit capabilities and quality oversight, allied to easy built-in reporting and exports and user definable data interrogation. The closed-loop principles mean that every transaction is transparent and every change informs other related changes. The detailed information for highly complex work scopes is held at individual workcard level and all work can be tracked by each workcard, using bar code swipe technology or other means.

OASES offers the technical sophistication that the aviation industry needs whilst being intuitively user-friendly and allowing scalability through different operational modules.

For the future, Commsoft sees itself becoming a dominant player with small airlines, Continuing Airworthiness Management Organizations (CAMOs) and independent MRO organizations, all the while expanding its presence in Asia, Africa, and North America

At the heart of OASES system is the Core Module which provides the essential system components that enable the operation and integration. The OASES functional modules include Continuing Airworthiness, Planning, Production, Line Maintenance, Material Management, Commercial Management and Warranty - any or all of which can be added depending on the client’s requirements. “An important element in Commsoft’s OASES offering is continuing development, with a published future road map with 2-3 Formal Releases being available to all customers in any 12 month period,” says Nick Godwin, Managing Director. “The customer receives these general updates free-of-charge for the subscribed modules and for support reasons Commsoft ensures that all customers are never more than two releases out of date.”

Commsoft recently worked closely with one of its Eastern European customers to integrate OASES with the Navision ERP system in order to streamline and enhance purchasing, accounting and business control features during a period of rapid growth for the airline. The airline wished to deploy full use of existing features in OASES, also requiring some extensive bespoke developments. Commsoft implemented a project control mechanism using teleconferencing, to evolve and review the specification, work¬flows, automation of data exchanges and manual interventions required.

Commsoft’s key USP is that it treats its customers as members of a family and is agile to change, with the goal of always maximizing the customer’s business value. For the future, Commsoft sees itself becoming a dominant player with small airlines, Continuing Airworthiness Management Organizations (CAMOs) and independent MRO organizations, all the while expanding its presence in Asia, Africa, and North America. “We will continue developing our unique product to offer better management and KPI features while fully embracing corporate aviation technology,” concludes Godwin.