Case Study: Royal Air Force achieves faster, automated maintenance and supply‑chain reporting with OpenText Analytics (Actuate)

Actuate reporting solution earns its stripes at RAF, as support department tightens its supply chain and adds more value

The Royal Air Force’s Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S) Logistics (Air) organisation faced slow, labour‑intensive reporting across multiple legacy and modern data stores after introducing the Typhoon. Critical logistics, maintenance and asset data sat in disparate systems (Informix, LITS, MDS, MJDI etc.), required manual SQL extracts and spreadsheet macros, and lacked web access or multi‑source reporting capabilities—forcing a 30‑person team to maintain hundreds of reports and delaying operational decision‑making.

DE&S implemented Actuate’s reporting platform (deployed on Citrix) to provide web‑based, multi‑source, pixel‑perfect and graphical reports with self‑service OLAP. Automated, parameterised reports reduced the report set by ~70% (from ~368 to ~120), cut the reporting team from 30 to 10, and shrank report generation from up to an hour to minutes, while extending secure access to deployed sites and improving visibility for faster, more cost‑effective supply‑chain decisions.

Royal Air Force

Alan W Moore

Head of Reporting Services, Management Information Branch, Defence Equipment & Support, RAF Wyton