Ramco Aviation (Booth No. 326) announced Tuesday at Heli-Expo 2014 that longtime customer Columbia Helicopters (Booth 4706) recently began the transition to Ramco’s Solution 5.6 integrated suite of maintenance, finance, human resources and payroll tracking software.
The offline capabilities of V5.6 are especially important for Columbia, as the company frequently operates its fleet of twin-rotor heavy-lift helicopters in remote theaters around the world with limited to no data connectivity. The system allows Columbia field stations to collect and retain important personnel and equipment cycle data on site, for later upload to a field headquarters as able. At zero-connectivity locales the operator can save the information on a data card for later shipment to the central office.
Columbia president Stan Wilson noted that Ramco’s software has also helped to “coordinate operations within our company. We found that some people were doing things in ways we didn’t know about, and this has helped get everyone operating from the same page.”
Columbia is the largest operator of and type-certificate holder for the Model 234 commercial variant to the CH-46 Sea Knight and CH-47 Chinook helicopters.