MKS, the global application life-cycle management (ALM) technology leader, has announced that ITT, a global supplier of defense, communications and surveillance solutions, is leveraging MKS Integrity™ to provide engineering change and configuration management for their complex ADS-B system.
ITT is the system integrator for the automated dependent surveillance – broadcast (ADS-B) program as part of the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) initiative. The ADS-B program replaces conventional radar-based air traffic surveillance with satellite-based GPS technology to provide air traffic surveillance data that gives more precise aircraft location information at a lower life-cycle cost. The system also provides aircraft with situational awareness information for traffic and weather data. With MKS Integrity, the organization was able to automate engineering configuration management of hardware and software assets at hundreds of ADS-B facilities throughout the US, eliminating inefficient manual processes, improving data reliability, and facilitating complex operational management of the network infrastructure.
“MKS Integrity enabled us to automate our maintenance processes for all assets in less than six weeks resulting in more efficient maintenance scheduling and better handling of large scale equipment maintenance issues,” said ITT’s ADS-B quality manager. “But even more important is the ability of MKS Integrity to provide a ‘single source of truth’ – information about what hardware and software exists in remote radio stations – enabling us to manage those assets and demonstrate contract compliance for configuration management. Reliable data and automated reporting capabilities have helped us to perform at the level of our aggressive program schedule and support infrastructure roll-out in record time.”
“Program configuration management requirements necessitated a reliable solution,” said Andrew Wertkin, CTO at MKS. “MKS Integrity contributed to ITT’s successful completion of the program’s physical configuration audit (PCA). Automated asset management provided by MKS Integrity has enabled ITT to meet requirements for configuration management of a FAA NAS-wide system, and assured integration of system changes in an efficient and cost-effective manner that minimizes system operational risk.”
