Axon announced it has signed a co-development agreement with SAP for the integration of a new maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) business solution with the SAP ERP application for aviation and aerospace organizations. The new MRO industry solution, called iMRO, is intended to improve productivity and planner visibility and reduce variations encountered between planning and operations, allowing higher asset utilizations to be realized for large and small airlines, manufacturers and third-party MRO providers. iMRO, together with MRO solutions from SAP, will deliver built-in best practices for maintenance engineering, maintenance planning, maintenance operations and business support processes.

iMRO is an industry-specific add-on for SAP ERP, which will expand and enhance the SAP user interface with dedicated applications for users such as maintenance technicians, planners and engineers to improve productivity, data accuracy and to cut down the unexpected process variations normally accepted by complex asset maintenance businesses.

The iMRO solution used together with SAP ERP is likely to enable a rich user experience for users in areas such as line maintenance, hangar operations, engine overhaul, component repair, spares, customer support, configuration management, fleet management, financials, supply chain management, human capital management and performance-based contracting. Significant improvements in data accuracy, productivity and asset or aircraft utilization may be realized by deploying Axon's iMRO with SAP ERP.

Customers Already Benefit From Use of Solutions from Axon and SAP
Axon MRO solutions are currently being used with SAP applications to great benefit at various airline, manufacturing and third-party maintenance companies including Goodrich.

"Goodrich Corporation has selected both SAP and Axon as strategic IT partners for our business transformation over the next few years," said Steve Hagood, Chief Information Officer, Goodrich Corp. "We are already benefiting from Axon's aerospace-specific MRO solutions with faster and easier implementations of SAP solutions for MRO around the world."

A member of the SAP User Group for Airlines (SUGAIR) Advisory Board commented, "SUGAIR is an active community representing more than 80 airline, third-party MRO and OEM aerospace organizations who have selected SAP solutions for enterprise and MRO business processes. The SUGAIR Advisory Board encourages airlines, third-party MROs and aerospace manufacturers to support and endorse SAP's roadmap for MRO, and welcomes the Axon iMRO industry add-on solution which aims to reduce time, cost and complexity of deployment whilst at the same time enhancing the user interface for front-office workers."

iMRO is provided as a specialized industry add-on by Axon, developed using the SAP NetWeaver(R) platform. This unprecedented approach capitalizes on lessons learned from more than 100 previous SAP solution-based MRO installations, and slashes data incompatibility and "system interface" complexity and cost as compared to bolting a stand-alone niche MRO application onto a generic enterprise platform. Integration, as well as cost visibility, performance measurement and electronic maintenance record management, is intended to help both thirdparty and internal maintenance and engineering organizations to realize greater benefits and to deploy world-class MRO applications faster, better and using less resources.

"Axon is fully committed to the MRO industry and to delivering a first-class MRO solution for our existing and new clients," commented Steve Cardell, Chief Executive Officer of Axon. "We believe SAP provides the right solution for best-run airlines and aerospace maintenance organizations world-wide and will ensure that iMRO is the right solution to maximize business benefits, productivity and asset utilization improvements, and to reduce the time and cost to deploy these world-class solutions."

SAP is the leading provider of enterprise business applications and a preferred choice for enterprise resource planning applications at aviation, aerospace, transport and defense organizations worldwide. Axon is a dedicated business transformation expert with unrivalled experience supporting SAP solutions for use in aviation and aerospace maintenance environments. SAP solutions have been adopted at all of the top 10 aerospace organizations worldwide, and Axon has worked at eight of these top 10 businesses. Together, SAP and Axon represent a first-class team to develop, deliver and support business applications for MRO.

"SAP chose Axon for this co-development agreement for MRO because of their proven track record in SAP solution implementation and development at aviation and aerospace MRO organizations around the world," said Klaus Heimann, Senior Vice President, Industry Solutions, SAP AG. "SAP is committed to this co-development and intends to work with Axon to increase customers' return on investment realized through deployment of SAP solutions and iMRO."

Customers have a choice how to receive iMRO, from a multi-supplier approach selecting solutions from SAP and Axon for the software and an independent or internal consultant for the implementation and support, to adopting an on-demand software-as-a-service (SaaS) model proposed by Axon where software, hardware, implementation and support can be purchased for a fixed monthly fee.