Project Title: WIRS

The Challenge

Keeping detailed track of the wiring systems in commercial airplanes that typically stay in service for up to forty years is an important and complex task for airplane manufacturers. The system used to detail all maintenance and alterations of wiring systems is essential for numerous reasons, among which are airplane safety and the adherence to constantly changing federal aviation standards and rules. One such system, first developed over thirty years ago, had become outdated in terms of its interface, ease of use, and flexibility. The aviation company needed additional resources that are knowledgeable with the system and able to help keep up with user change requests. The customer estimated that each hour of system downtime cost the company 50,000USD.

The wiring configuration management system consists of approximately 200 individual COBOL II applications comprising over 2,000,000 lines of source code running on IBM 390 mainframes using the MVS operating system. These applications are used to manage electrical engineering information contained in over 150 IMS/MVS databases. Nearly 5,000 system users interacted with the system through approximately 400 textual interface screens.

LUXOFT was brought in to lend the resources needed to redevelop and update the legacy wire tracking system. Key upgrades included the web enablement of the system. This would replace all textual interface screens with web-based interface pages. The web pages needed to be accessible to system users from Windows 2000-based PC's via Netscape or Microsoft Internet Explorer.

The Solution

Luxoft provided a dedicated team to both help maintain and conduct design recovery of the legacy wire tracking and configuration management system. The Luxoft team analyzed the system and set out to enhance flexibility, upgrade all system modules to a graphical Web-based interface, add Web browser access, and to provide SSL security for safe access outside the internal network.

Together with the customer's engineers the system was upgraded from COBOL VS to COBOL ll and the OS moved from 390 to Z/OS.

The customer now has a knowledgeable, affordable, and well trained dedicated team to help its internal resources maintain and improve the key system responsible for tracking the millions of variables connected with the wiring system configurations of its planes over the course of their long life-spans. The wire tracking system has received the first in a series of upgrades and improvements.

The system is now:

• Web enabled
  
• More flexible
  
• Easier to use and learn (newcomers can now train themselves)

The added resources have considerably accelerated the process of keeping up with user change requests.

Tools and Technologies

• OS - z/OS
  
• COBOL ll
  
• IMS
  
• HTML / JavaScript
  
• Shadow Web Server
  
• WebSphere

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