With more than 9,000 flights daily and close to 3 million flights annually, German air space continues to have one of the highest traffic volumes worldwide. DFS Deutsche Flugsicherung GmbH is responsible for air traffic control in Germany, is a State-owned company under private law, and has 5,200 employees.
Germany also has the highest volume in air traffic in Europe. DFS operates control centers in Langen, Bremen, Karlsruhe and Munich. DFS performs its air navigation services at 17 airports throughout Germany. DFS also controls air traffic from the EUROCONTROL headquarters in Maastricht and is represented at 17 international airports throughout Germany. DFS consists of the following business units: Center, Tower und Aeronautical Solutions.
Professionalism and efficiency are equally demanded by the continually increasing amounts of information. The DFS "Center" business unit plans to implement a failure analysis support system ("Störungsanalyse-Support-System" - SASS). This IT system will be implemented within the maintenance framework to the Air Traffic Management Systems (ATM systems) and will provide the Engineer on Duty (EoD) direct access to Service Level 1 (SL1) and all existing knowledge relevant to maintenance information.
In September 2005, empolis received the order to develop a knowledge management concept for the maintenance of the ATM systems and a prototype for the failure analysis support system (SASS).
The SASS prototype is based on the empolis:Service Lifecycle Suite (e:SLS) and is currently available to SL1 and SL2 at the Langen and Munich control centers.
Resulting from the findings during the prototype phase, DFS defined new or different SASS requirements and has summarized these in its specifications. Based on this information, empolis has worked with DFS to develop SASS specifications.
The specifications have been accepted and are now followed by the next step of SASS requirements implementation. DFS has also selected empolis in this case. The first training is scheduled for mid-October of 2007. Accessibility of SASS for the control centers in Langen, Bremen, Munich and Karlsruhe is planned for December 2007.
The expectations of empolis software are extremely high. The direct accessibility to the comprehensive and current SASS knowledge database via the EoD's workplace makes the EoD practically independent in his failure analysis in the case of occurrence. Furthermore, trouble shooting, especially with known failures, is handled by the EoD much more rapidly - 24/7.
For more information please contact info[aet]empolis.com
