PFM Labs, a leading software development company that automates complex processes for the airline industry, has officially announced the launch of its latest solution called Flight Optimal.
According to certain reports, Flight Optimal brings forth automation and optimization capabilities to improve upon flight scheduling, training progress monitoring, and operations planning. More on the same would reveal how it allows for flight training institutions to provide the highest quality training, all while reducing costs and increasing operational efficiencies through a reduction in manual tasks and improvement across strategic planning.
Talk about the given technology’s features on a slightly deeper level, they begin from how it can automatically collect and synchronize key information regarding students, instructors, and resources (aircraft and simulators) to maximize scheduling effectiveness. Such a setup, on its part, treads up a long distance to pack together training plans and progress, personal calendars, existing time commitments, off and on-duty periods, qualifications, downtime requirements, as well as availability projections, thus ensuring that the most up-to-date information is being used.
Next up, we must dig into Flight Optimal’s ability to automatically generate the relevant schedules. You see, with simultaneous matching of students, instructors, and resources, the solution is able to maximize training objectives and scheduling effectiveness, and meet operational and regulatory requirements. Markedly enough, planners here can also specify scheduling priorities for students and resources, set duty-time targets for instructors, and control location-specific operational constraints.
Moving on to the solution’s potential when it comes to generating transparency and real-time updates. You see, leveraging a control interface which enables oversight and maintains transparency of the scheduling process, Flight Optimal effectively provides planners with key information about student and instructor utilization, resource status, and real-time dispatch updates. By doing so, it builds greater trust around the scheduling solutions.
“We are thrilled to debut such a substantial advancement in flight training management software with the launch of Flight Optimal,” said Muharrem Mane, Chief Scientist at PFM Labs. “Flight training institutions need to stay at the forefront of innovation and our robust solution with numerous key benefits delivers with proven results. For example, an activity that previously took eight hours for planners to complete can now be done in minutes, while offering superior and more robust schedules. We are excited to demo Flight Optimal at EATS in Portugal this November and invite anyone to stop by to try it.”
Then, there is the solution’s potential in conceiving projections and tradeoffs. In essence, immediate feedback on potential tradeoffs and projections of duty time, resource utilization, and disruption impact empowers planners to assess the long-term implications of their decisions and avoid resource shortages during the training cycle. They can also better gauge any potential scheduling conflicts that may arise from scheduling modifications, and at the same time, explore various what-if scenarios both before and after schedule generation.
Another detail worth a mention here is rooted in the Flight Optimal’s adaptation, reflow, and disruption management system that can help users navigate disruptions and maintain scheduling continuity to adapt to a dynamic environment and changing operational conditions. Hence, planners who choose to leverage Flight Optimal can also access information synchronized across user groups (dispatch, maintenance, course planners, and schedulers), have control over fixed and flexible training events, and alongside that, they can even dynamically reallocate resources to respond to disruptions.
As for the real world benefits of such a solution, they include, for starters, the prospect of reduced manpower, as Flight Optimal can minimize manual scheduling and provide almost 10 to 15 times reduction in the time required to generate schedule, allowing staff to focus on more critical tasks.
While reducing manpower on one hand, the solution makes a point to enhance resources utilization on the other. There is also potential for improved overall productivity, something which the solution achieves on the back of its Smart Scheduling feature and also leveraging user control over training priorities and operational constraints that optimize resource utilization and cuts down on idle time.
