>> Announcer: Live from Atlanta, Georgia, it's theCUBE, covering IFS World Conference 2018. Brought to you by IFS. >> Welcome back to theCUBE's live coverage of IFS World Conference here in Atalanta, Georgia. I'm Rebecca Knight, your host along with my co-host, Jeff Frick. It is late in the day here, the reception is about to start, the drinks are flowing, but we are still interviewing guests, and we've got a great panel right now. Joining us is Scott Helmer. He is the Senior Vice President at the Aviation and Business Defense Unit at IFS, and Henry Canaday, who is a contributing editor at Aviation Week. Thank you both so much for joining us. >> Thanks for having us. >> I wonder if you could walk our viewers a little bit through the idea, where does aviation and defense sit within the IFS business strategy? >> I'm happy to answer that. I think our new CEO of IFS, Darren Roos, has been very clear that there are three things that IFS will be best at. Number one, we will be best at mid-market ERP in those vertical markets that we care about. We will be number one in field service management. And we will be number one in maintenance management solutions in aviation and defense. So aviation and defense is one of the pillars on which IFS's strategy is currently based, and we have formed a global business unit inside of IFS that is specifically responsible, it's a 300 person strong team that is responsible for distributing a comprehensive portfolio of A and D solutions to the A and D market globally. >> What are the some of the biggest challenges that you're setting out to solve for your customers? >> Also a good question. We address the full range of management solution capability across A and D. So whether you're an operator in commercial or defense sector, or whether you're an inservice support provider, we provide solutions and support, all of your MRO capabilities, some of your performance-based logistics requirements, some of your supply chain requirements. Basically leveraging the core processes that IFS is differentiated around. Those being manufacturing, asset and service management, supply chain and project management. >> What's special about aviation and defense that's not been marketed or service delivery, which captures a lot of industry verticals, but the fact that you guys got carved out as a separate vertical, what are some of those unique challenges? >> What is chiefly unique about aviation and defense is the overall complexity in the marketplace. You're talking about very very complex capital intense of mobile assets, where managing the maintenance obligations in order to maintain the availability of the aircraft is under the scrutiny of compliance and is required to be done efficiently, without compromising safety. >> Not to mention the fact, your assets are flying all over the world, so they might not necessarily be able just to roll into the maintenance yard at the end of a bad day. >> And they're large and expensive, that's for sure. >> (laughs) Large and expensive. >> Henry, you've been covering the aviation industry for more than 20 years now. What do you see as the biggest trends, biggest concerns that a company like IFS is trying to grapple with right now, in terms of servicing its clients? >> Well the interesting thing about the airline industry is that it technically in many areas it's extremely advanced and very fast moving industry. In selling tickets, the industry has been going through a continual IT revolution for the last 20 years. Things like giving you notices about when your planes arrive and stuff like that. Very fast moving, changing all the time. But this is stuff, it's just money. There's no safety involved, so they can take chances, if they get it 99% right, they make enough money, they can solve the one percent errors. The problem with maintenance is it's messy, it's complex as Scott says. It's also safety critical. They can't screw it up one tenth of one percent of the time. They've been very, very cautious and very, very slow, and they look sluggish and stagnant on the maintenance side. But fortunately, now, especially the U.S. airlines are making some good money, so there's actually an opportunity for companies like IFS to come in here and really reform the maintenance program. >> We cover a lot of autonomous vehicle shows. Autonomous vehicles are coming. Obviously, a big element of autonomous vehicles will ultimately be safety. One of the things that comes up over and over again, if you look at the number of accidents, the fatalities that happen on our streets, compared to what happens in aviation, if a week on the streets happened at a week in the aviation industry, the planes would be shut down. >> Scott: There'd be no aviation. >> The threshold that you guys have to achieve in terms of safety is second to none. I don't know if there's anything even close, especially in terms of volume of people, and then, oh by the way, everyone globally is getting richer, so the amount of passenger flow. I don't know if you can speak to that in terms of the growth of passenger miles, I imagine is the metric, continues to explode. >> You've had basically 18 straight years without a fatal crash by a major American airline. That's unheard of, that's unheard of. We used to have one crash a year up till around 2000. Every time somebody annoys me with customer service in an airline, I think of this, they're doing the important stuff right, so I don't care. (laughs) >> Very well. >> Right. >> And, then do you think the efficiency, right? At least here domestically, I always think of Southwest, 'cause they were the first ones that really had fast turns, and they raced to the gate, they raced back out of the gate, in terms of really trying to get the maximum efficiency out of those assets. The pressure there, in translating to the other airlines is pretty significant to make sure you're really getting a high ROI. >> That's absolutely right. Again one of the levels of complexity that we were discussing. Certainly airlines are being forced to finally introduce some change into their maintenance operations, as the increasingly complex assets are part of the re-fleeting, as that faster traffic continues to grow. It's about both achieving greater efficiency in maintenance operations, not only without compromising safety, but ensuring the availability of that asset. Because revenue dollars still matter greatly, and those assets are your revenue producing assets that an airline has. >> Can you describe your approach in terms of of how you work together with your clients, the airlines, in terms of developing new products and new features. >> One of the unique characteristics about aviation and defense is not only the size of the client, but the length and duration of the relationships. So, we have a long and rich history, both at IFS and through the acquired MXI technologies, of working with our partners in their programs over the very long term. As much as we have domain expertise and a sizable team of domain experts inside of our business, we're able to recognize our partners that are visionaries in the industry, and we have established multiple levels of collaboration to involve them in the shaping of solution capability to support their businesses going forward. We are just launching today two new planning applications that were not only being launched with American Airlines and LATAM Airlines respectively, but were co-developed with subject matter experts at each. So they're tremendously valuable inputs into shaping our vision of what solutions are going to best drive business value for our customers over a very long relationship horizon. >> So, what have you unpack at MXI acquisition, what did that give you that you didn't have before and what's the total solution now? >> Certainly, I joined IFS through the MXI acquisition. I was previously it's Chief Operating Officer. MXI was focused on best of breed MRO capability for both defense and service port providers, as well as commercial airlines. In combining with IFS, that had a rich history in A and D, we now have the most comprehensive solution portfolio available on the market today. We are the only vendor that can provide best of breed capability, integrated into an end to end enterprise landscape, and we've got the team of subject matter experts or domain experts that are capable of delivering that value, not just the product, but the solution to the customers across all the segments of A and D. >> Just to be clear, your defense is more than aviation. I saw a military truck over on the expo hall, so it's assets beyond just airplanes when it comes to defense. >> Correct, we support on the defense side of things. We support multiple platforms, whether they're fighter jets, whether they're cargo carriers, whether they tanks, whether they're ships, we support for the operators, the offset optimization, performance based logistics, security, et cetera. For the in-service port providers, we similarly support supply chain requirements, MRO requirements, et cetera. >> Henry, as you look forward, you've been covering this space for a while, what are some big, new things coming down the road in the aviation industry that we should be looking for, 'cause we haven't seen a lot of big things from the outside looking in. I guess we had the next generation fighter planes, and then we had obviously the A380 and the 787 on the commercial side. What's new and coming that you're excited about? >> Well, technology changes slowly in commercial aviation, because of the safety aspect. The big, new things are the new aircraft, the 787 and the A350. They are really new generation aircraft, lot more composites, plastics if you will. They're using that instead of aluminum. The other things that's happening is additive manufacturing, this whole printing parts. That's real big, and I've been telling everybody the new Boeing 787 has two printed parts, one made by GE, $120 billion a year. The other made by a company called Norsk Titanium, with 140 people coming out of Norway, which is not exactly the center of innovation in aerospace programs. >> Jeff: With a printed part, like a 3D printed part? >> Yeah a printed part. Those are the two big changes in the aircraft. I mean, customers aren't going to see it, but these planes are now made largely of plastics and the metal parts are going to be more and more printed. Much more efficient way, lighter aircraft, less fuel use, more efficient, less environmental effects, etc. That's a big deal. More important than a huge airplane. >> Right, well I can imagine, we hear about the impacts of 3D printing. I haven't really seen it yet, but this vision where your ability to print parts on demand will have significant impacts on supply chains and inventory and huge, huge impacts down the road. >> And the airline industry is the most demanding. They've go to go through really massive proofs of concept and proof of materials, and it's starting to happen. >> Henry, what would you say is the most important area that IFS should focus on. If they can solve one problem in the airline industry, what do you think it should be? >> Availability would be one. Just aircraft availability, that's what. The airlines are concerned about two things. Dollar cost per flight hour to maintain and what they call a technical dispatch reliability. They want to get that plane launched 99.99% of the time. Get rid of the unpredictive maintenance problems. Schedule everything, make it quick, I want to get the planes off on time. >> It's amazing that unscheduled maintenance, regardless of industry, still continues to be such a bug-a-boo to productivity and profitability. It's one of these things that just has huge impact. >> I would completely agree with Henry. I think asset availability is the number one focus for commercial operators. Our focus has certainly been around trying to remove the impacts of unscheduled maintenance. One of the applications that we launched today allows you to react very, very quickly to unplanned or unscheduled maintenance events, and to do some what-if modeling, so that you can implement the best plan for your fleet, in order to maximize the availability of that asset. Not just in terms of bolstering or producing a better plan. We're attempting to do that even with line planning, where we're adjusting the traditional planning perimeters away from what must be done to what should be done in order to maximize the availability of that aircraft. Of course, as Henry said, everybody's focused on faster, tighter turnaround times. All of our software is designed to try and drive tighter turnaround times and greater efficiency. >> What percentage is scheduled versus predictive versus prescriptive? Maintenance. >> I think it varies by airline. The great majority of maintenance is scheduled, I mean, there's no doubt about that. They put these aircraft down for a week or a month. It's a massive amount of money. It's not the amount of maintenance, it's when unscheduled maintenance happens, it really throws things off. It may only be one or two percent of the maintenance tasks are unscheduled, but that's what throws the aircraft off the schedule. That's what leaves passengers sitting in the departure lounges, ticked off. Not getting there till the next day or the next week, whenever, so it's a very, very small percentage, these unscheduled maintenance events, but it's crucial to the airlines' economics. >> Exactly. Crucial to our itineraries, as well, as the economics. Exactly. >> Making sure that the airlines continue to do what they do best, which is get us from place A to place B. >> Precisely. Well, Scott Henry, thank you so much, it's been a really fun conversation. >> I enjoyed being here, thank you. >> Jeff: Thank you. >> Thanks, Henry. >> Thanks. >> We will have more from theCUBE's live coverage of IFS World Conference just after this. (digital music)