Vector Aerospace is an industry-leading, independent provider of maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO)services for fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft.
Their philosophy is to build and deepen relationships with customers and OEMs by providing superior service through rigorous implementation of process innovation.
Vector Aerospace Helicopter Services Fleetlands holds approval from some of the world’s leading OEMs including: AgustaWestland, Boeing, Sikorsky, Rolls-Royce, Eurocopter, Pratt & Whitney Canada, Bell Helicopter, General Electric, Turbomeca, Sagem Avionics, Rockwell Collins and many other manufacturers and suppliers.
Vector required a system that made it easier to measure incidents and nonconformances. Through Q-Pulse, they successfully and efficiently managed this – allowing them to run a streamlined Quality Management System.
The Challenge
As an industry leading independent MRO specialist, it was imperative that Vector Aerospace had an efficient Quality Management System, making it easier to assess their incidents and occurrences and non-conformances.
Historically, they captured Incidents and Occurrences in a laborious paper form. The results were then analysed using Microsoft Excel.
Vector Aerospace UK Quality Director Hanif Nabi said: “Our previous system wasn’t very practical and over time this meant that our quality administrators and managers had limited visibility of the current state of findings and actions.
“It also meant we could not get a business wide view of progress of nonconformances and monitoring the costs of those non-conformances was also difficult to track.”
The Solution
Vector Aerospace turned to Q-Pulse IMS, developed by Gael Ltd, in a bid to cure their previous QMS issues. By installing Q-Pulse, they streamlined their Quality Management and ensured they continued to comply with standards ISO 9001:2008, AS 9100, AS 9110 and Mil Part 145.
Hanif added: “Installing Q-Pulse gave us the system we had needed, allowing us to overhaul our paper based system and record our findings electronically. It gave us organization wide visibility of our quality functions and actions.
“Our Corrective Actions/Preventative Action’s were assigned more appropriately and our actions could easily be tracked by management allowing our tasks to be completed in a timelier manner.
“There were a number of features we found particularly useful such as the Messages and Escalations feature and the fact that Q-Pulse significantly saved on our admin time.”
The Result
For Vector, Q-Pulse IMS provided them with a number of tangible and intangible benefits, providing them with the basis on which to run their Quality Management System.
The company were soon recording a 25% reduction in resources being used within their Quality department. And – importantly for Vector Aerospace – the cost of non-conformances and CA/PA was now being captured.
“Being able to record the cost of non-conformances and Corrective Actions/Preventative Action was really important for us,” said Hanif. “It meant that we could then get the business wide view of non-conformance progress we were looking for and we could monitor their costs.
“The resources that Q-Pulse IMS saved allowed us to increase focus in our other business improvement programs.
“Most notably though, was that we could increase our risk and root cause analysis, capturing them with the help of Q-Pulse.
“Basically, our investment in Q-Pulse had paid for itself within 12 months.”