An aerospace manufacturer is flying high on paperless workflows

Industry

Aviation

Challenge

Production delays due to paper-intensive processes and a remote workforce

Solution

Iron Mountain InSight Content Management solution

Value

• Unified operational view provides full visibility for all pending work items
• Seamless integration with existing technologies ensures precision
• Better production efficiency improves customer experiences
• Ease of use and ready access to forms speeds up adoption and outcomes

Established in 1998 in Eskisehir, Turkey, Alp Aviation is a premium manufacturer of flight-critical and rotating parts, systems, and subsystems. During its 15-year history, the company has developed over 70 one-of-a-kind manufacturing processes. Alp Aviation’s dedicated proprietary systems provide over 40% cost savings compared to classical production methods.¹

¹ https://www.alp.com.tr/Hakkimizda

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in early 2020, most of Alp Aviation’s 1,300 highly skilled employees started working remotely to serve a worldwide customer base that wanted new products, faster. At the time, most of the company’s processes used a mix of physical and digital formats—including purchase orders, contracts, and correspondence. These manual, document-centric processes caused bottlenecks and delays and made accessing information difficult, especially for the remote workforce.

The company was seeking help on its journey to becoming a paperless digital-first organization. Alp Aviation implemented Iron Mountain InSight Content Management solution and helped improve process workflows and deliver better, more efficient outcomes.

Bringing transparency to a murky process

Manufacturers in the aerospace industry are under constant pressure to maximize profitability and improve efficiency — forces that were heightened by the pandemic. Decision-makers at Alp Aviation realized that if they were going to continue to meet their customer’s expectations, they needed to digitize. “The main reason for putting the Iron Mountain InSight Content Management solution into use at Alp Aviation was to transfer business processes that were carried out on paper — in office and production areas — to an electronic platform, and [achieve] the dream of a paperless environment,” said Atilla Ünver, Director of Information Technologies at Alp Aviation.

At the time, many of Alp Aviation’s sales and production systems were reliant on paper documents and manual data entry. As the business grew, this labor-intensive process became untenable. Paper documents were difficult to manage and often got lost, impeding the company’s ability to deliver products and services in an efficient manner. Furthermore, teams across the company did not share the same visibility into accounts and workflows, creating confusion between team members, and inconsistent experiences for customers.

Alp Aviation worked with the Iron Mountain team to scan and digitize its existing documents, then implement new workflow management and automation processes to help ensure that all company and customer data was properly indexed in an efficient manner. The solution also gave Alp Aviation full control over document access and editing rights, providing the right employees instant access only to the information they need at any given time. The company began to see benefits immediately, gaining visibility into the stages of the document processing and approval workflow. The result was greater efficiency, along with the elimination of lost paper forms, explained Ünver.

Improving outcomes starts with improving internal processes

Alp Aviation manufactures a wide variety of aerospace components ranging from helicopter tail rotor drive shafts to flight-critical structural components and assemblies. One of the most crucial stages during manufacturing is the inspection and testing phase, which must be thoroughly documented, reviewed, and approved. Previously, the team’s manual system acted as a bottleneck in the workflow, reducing efficiency and slowing delivery times for customers. The paper-based process also increased the risk of mistakes since there was no single location to view all activities.

The Iron Mountain InSight Content Management solution helped Alp Aviation overcome these hurdles by implementing an automated process for forms processing. New digital workflows ensure the right paperwork gets to the right person at the right time in the process. Inspectors are now able to search for and retrieve all relevant paperwork related to the project at hand. And two-way integration with Alp Aviation’s manufacturing execution system (MES) provides the unified view of operations the team needed.

“The integrations made with the MES system, especially during the production operations, have impacted quality inspections by ensuring that the tests that need to be done during the production phase are carried out exactly and on time,” explained Ünver.

Reducing tech burden for all employees

One of the most important considerations for Alp Aviation when evaluating information management providers was the ease of use. The solution needed to provide seamless two-way integration with their existing technologies, scalability as the team grew and needs changed, and a user-friendly system that was easy to learn. The Iron Mountain InSight Content Management solution solution met all of these requirements.

“The most important feature of the Iron Mountain InSight Content Management solution, in our opinion, is that without having any programming knowledge and infrastructure, a developer can design the processes and forms, and users can easily access the forms from live platforms. Another feature of the system is its ability to be easily integrated with other software platforms,” said Ünver.

So far, Alp Aviation has digitized over 100 processes using Iron Mountain’s solution and it doesn’t have any plans of stopping. “Our process and form design project will continue until all processes at Alp Aviation evolve into a completely paperless environment,” shared Ünver

Learn more about Iron Mountain Insight Content Management solution.

To learn more about how Iron Mountain helps customers increase efficiency and improve outcomes, click here.