United Airlines flies with the Siemon Cabling System

United Airlines Flies with the Siemon Cabling System

Kevin Manweiler understands performance. As United Airlines' Senior Telecommunications Engineer, he is responsible for the engineering, design and product selection for United's premise cabling world-wide. In this role Kevin finds himself leading a continuous flow of challenging projects. United's new Indianapolis Maintenance Center is perhaps the greatest example.

The IMC is one of the largest construction projects in the world. Sprawling on the Indiana countryside adjacent to Indianapolis International Airport, the facility will cost over $800,000,000 to complete, and will continue in construction to the year 2003. Here, as in all their facilities, United has standardized on Siemon Cabling System connecting hardware.

United's Maintenance Operations Division is responsible for the overhauls, repair and modification of United's vast and growing fleet of aircraft. The Indianapolis facility will provide even greater capacity for United, which has long been hailed as setting the standard in aircraft maintenance. The IMC is a state-of-the-art facility based on world class manufacturing practices. The facility will employ approximately 7,500 workers, and will consist of over three million square feet providing hangar capacity, an engine repair facility, and buildings for spare parts, ground equipment maintenance, technical support and administrative functions. The new maintenance center has aggressive performance goals. The current cycle time for a "C check", a standard airplane maintenance program, is 3-5 days. United's goal is to complete them in 2-3 days in Indianapolis. An "HMV", or major plane overhaul, now takes 28 days; in the new facility the work will be completed in 14-21 days.

One of the ways these goals will be met is through more effective distribution of information. United's mechanics rely on vast amounts of data to get their jobs done-in the past scores of manuals were placed at work areas throughout the hangar. The objective of the new facility is to bring the information directly to the mechanic at the plane. New computer systems now contain much of the information conveyed in the manuals, and active links with jet manufacturers like Boeing also provide access to extensive technical data needed to keep United's fleet in top shape. In order to "future proof" the facility, each work area is cabled with both category 5 UTP and fiber. Bob Hasty, MIS Project Manager, noted that the IMC "is a true multimedia environment from the ground up."

The cabling infrastructure is designed and installed to last well beyond the turn of the century. With over 8,000 termination points, Hasty's goal was to "never have to run another cable here. It is more cost effective to do it right the first time, and the cost savings are tremendous. The category 5 cable gives us the potential to handle any new technology that may come along, and we are committed to exploiting the latest technology in this facility."

There is a more practical aspect to the decision to cable each work area with category 5 UTP as well. In some cases it would be impossible to come back and recable due to the nature of the work being done in the maintenance facility. Hasty explains: "This is a dynamic environment and if we had any downtime, the loss of revenue would be huge."

The selection of connecting hardware for the Indianapolis Maintenance Center was handled by Manweiler. He relied on extensive research and United's own hands-on testing. "I wanted to know how the products worked in real life," says Manweiler. What he found was that a product's performance claims didn't always match its marketing claims. "It's one thing to test cable on a spool or products in a lab. We needed to ensure good consistent results, so we tried to create realistic situations. We'd unravel 1,000 foot lengths of cable and run it out, twist it, turn it-then terminate and test it." What he found was that Siemon products performed the best.

Based upon the results of their own testing and research, United Airlines elected to standardize on Siemon connecting hardware. Each work area is outfitted with Siemon CT faceplates loaded with category 5 CT couplers and fiber couplers. In the closets CT panels are equipped with copper and fiber couplers. In addition to transmission performance, Manweiler knew that durability was a key consideration-the maintenance center is an active, hustling environment that is sure to be tough on the equipment installed there. Ease of termination was another critical factor in product selection. "We wanted something fool-proof to terminate. Face it-installers get tired and it becomes difficult to get consistent results. The Siemon products are wonderfully easy for our technicians to terminate and work with". Finally, he says, "Siemon products look good too-there's a real aesthetic value."

About United Airlines:

United Airlines is an employee-owned company, with 76,280 employees like Kevin Manweiler committed to making it the most competitive airline in the world. In 1994, United served over 6.6 million customers and achieved their best on-time performance in 7 years. Accomplishments like these come only as the result of vision and commitment. United is making business decisions to take it into the 21st century. They recognize the value of a reliable cabling infrastructure and are building to provide solutions for today and into the future. And they're doing it using Siemon Cabling System products.

When speed is of the essence...

Another of United's recent telecommunications projects involved recabling 8 flight reservation centers across the country. The project involved upgrading 4,800 agent positions in a time frame of only 45 days-with no interruption of work or service for either United's employees or its customers. A state-of-the-art Automatic Call Director was installed, and "dumb" terminals at agent positions were replaced with intelligent workstations. Again, United standardized on Siemon Cabling System connecting hardware for its outstanding transmission performance and reliability. Over 2,000,000 feet of category 5 cable was installed, terminated to over 10,000 Siemon's angled category 5 CT couplers. Best of all, the job was completed exactly on schedule and with a 100% success rate; a testimony both to United's capabilities and the "field-proven" performance of Siemon products.