Overcoming the Challenges of Growth

Chrono Aviation, founded in 2012, is a Canadian based group of companies providing Charter, Cargo, and Maintenance services. Along with subsidiaries Chrono Jet and WAAS Aerospace, Chrono Aviation now operates a fleet of 14 aircraft, employs 300 people, and manages two maintenance facilities.

It’s fleet of Boeing 737s, Pilatus PC-12s, Beechcraft 1900Ds, and De Havilland Dash 8s provide Charter services across Canada and the U.S., including to locations in the Northern and Arctic territories, while Cargo services are available globally.

Due to several years of rapid growth, in 2019 Chrono were seeking a scalable and modern software solution to help with some of the operational headaches it was experiencing. They decided that ENVISION was the solution to fix these issues and support their growth in the years to come.

The Challenge

Before ENVISION, Chrono’s different departments - Sales, Maintenance, Ground Service, Inventory, HR, Quality – were using an array of systems to manage their data and processes. Chrono sought to have a system that could bridge across all these functions to increase its efficiency while it continues to grow.

The one exception in this regard was Chrono’s in-house planning system which they wished to keep in place for the time being, and have it connect with their new IT infrastructure.

The Solution

Chrono implemented ENVISION’s entire suite of modules, bringing all its teams onto one solution and increasing visibility company-wide. Management can now use ENVISION’s dashboards to maintain a high-level overview of all departments, and dig into the details as and when required.

For Chrono’s in-house planning system, we used ENVISION’s RESTful API capabilities to connect the two, and have them talk to each other, so everyone can still benefit from the increased visibility.

The Challenge

With larger aircraft joining the fleet, such as their Boeing 737, Chrono had more complexity in their operations and more items to track. They desired more in-depth maintenance status reports and the ability to forecast maintenance events more accurately.

The Solution

With ENVISION’s Fleet Management module Chrono can now easily view the status of their fleet and efficiently plan maintenance. 

The Aircraft Enquiry screen uses real-time data to present a high-level overview of each aircraft in the fleet, showing its serviceability, number of defects, assigned base, flying hours and more. From here users can drill down into each aircraft’s individual dashboard which displays a whole host of information, including a detailed, multi-tiered configuration tree. 

ENVISION’s Maintenance Forecast allows Chrono to plan ahead based on an array of different metrics and permutations. Once maintenance events are forecasted, Work Packs can be quickly created and scheduled in, with the Maintenance department having visibility of the process throughout.

The Challenge

A significant challenge in the past for Chrono was inventory management. With their operations expanding, issues with tracking transactions, requisitions, and billing were starting to grow. 

An example of one issue in particular was the billing of part exchanges. As the invoice for the core repair can come weeks or months after the initial transaction, it meant that the manual billing and administration of these orders in the event of any changes to the cost, was taking up more and more of the team’s time. 

The Solution

The deployment of ENVISION’s Inventory Management module addressed all the issues that Chrono were facing. Functionality such as the Part Master database, automatic reservations, requisition authorization, and extensive transaction logs have enabled Chrono to manage their inventory in a much more disciplined manner.

And as for exchange orders, users can now simply go back to the original order and amend the billing directly from there.