Among recent developments, the following new technology applications have been adopted by the operation:

 LISA (Latest Issue Search Application)

 This drawing issue database allows authors and illustrators (plus other engineering disciplines) to rapidly determine correct drawing issue status prior to commencement of work, thus eliminating wasted effort and the potential for errors.  Besides latest issues, the database also holds a full record of previous issues, allowing configuration audit trails to be performed when dealing with customer part queries. LISA is used for all aircraft projects. A more detailed, specific configuration database has been developed for situations where core drawings are shared by different variants of the same basic aircraft in addition to unique drawings but this has so far been applied only to the EH101 helicopter

Cross-Publication QA Parsing Tool

Designed for checking the content accuracy of a suite of existing, inherited publications, this tool permits rapid checks of the tabular parts data in Parts Catalogues and Repair Manuals to ensure consistency of part numbers and issues, and to identify errors for correction.  Although its use has so far been limited to a small number of projects, it has a universal application to pairs of documents of this type for any aircraft project, either existing or new.

GKNAES Technical Publications is currently seeking to refine a process for common parts data entry for output as Spares Provisioning files and Illustrated Parts Catalogues, which could have a major impact on the costs of these tasks.  Processes and tools for the capture and conversion of design data for more efficient generation of new illustrations are now fully implemented, significantly reducing costs by in most cases.  Isodraw 6 CAD Process software is now being acquired to speed up the work to remove unwanted lines on wireframe models captured in the transfer process.