A foreword on EFPAC

By Ashley Cooper, Managing Director, TES Aviation Group. UK

In the rapidly changing aviation environment of the late 1990’s airlines and aircraft/engine owners became increasingly focused upon the engine maintenance costs as a means to reducing direct airline costs and minimising adverse cash flow. The result was an increased demand on the Engineering Groups within airline or lessor from Financial Directors and CFO’s for visibility of maintenance cost and predictability of cash flow requirements.

Whilst engineering groups could, with significant time investment, produce a fairly accurate maintenance budget and cash flow requirement on an annual basis, such predictions rapidly became out of date as the fleet utilisation changed, new routes were introduced and the inevitable unscheduled removals occurred.

With the increasing popularity of leasing aircraft to allow low cost start-up and to improve balance sheet positions, the integration of such factors as maintenance reserve payments, draw downs and end of lease compliance / penalties added further to the complexity of cash flow forecasts that were required to effectively manage engine fleets within the modern day operating environment.

In early 1998 before we embarked on developing our own Engine Fleet Planning And Costing (EFPAC) software, we reviewed the software market place to determine what was already available to support airline engineering groups with effective technical and financial management. At that time we found many technical record and inventory management systems available, but nothing to bring together engine technical records data with meaningful technical and financial planning information.

After two years of development and speaking with our airline Customers, engine/aircraft lessors and engine shops, about what they felt was required to enable fast and effective financial reporting, we launched our EFPAC software in 2001.

I am pleased to say that EFPAC is one of the most advanced software planning tools available in the industry today, and being specifically designed as an easy to use desktop tool to integrate the technical aspects of engine management with financial reporting on maintenance costs, it remains a truly unique product in the market place.

We are confident that you will find EFPAC just as easy to use, fun to explore and well designed to enable the full extent of financial reporting and technical planning that you may require. Our professional engineering team at TES, and a growing list of customers in other countries are using this powerful tool for the cost effective management of all engine programs and we are delighted to make this product available to you.