Article

What’s an MSI and Why Should I Care?

BY Stu Garrett
A study isn’t needed to confirm that air travel can induce anxiety if anything goes awry. Even one tiny surprise can trigger some worries.

All this is because air travel has become one of the most complex processes we may ever encounter. Dozens of technology systems — mostly working behind the scenes and invisible to the traveling public — have made air travel infinitely safer, more globally available, and more efficient than ever before. However, because travel is so interconnected, the same technology that has delivered so much opportunity for value also carries the potential for significant disruption if something glitches anywhere in the network.

Technology Is the New Value Proposition

Information is the lifeblood of today’s ever-more-sophisticated airports. It follows then that free and transparent information sharing is critically important. The information — or data shared between systems — must be sent in formats that can be digested properly by all systems, and within the time frames needed.

The key to getting all systems humming along coherently is implementing a master systems integration (MSI) program. Though it may sound like many used throughout the aviation industry, this acronym is deceptively important. An MSI is quite literally the foundation for directing all the data exchanges among all systems in formats necessary to keep complex aviation facilities running.

The MSI is a basic planning framework. It’s a process that focuses on asking the right questions instead of providing all the answers. It sets the stage so one or more parties can make a business decision quickly and efficiently, based on all the relevant information needed for a transaction or some other process. The information is shared by following the rules to which everyone has agreed.

By directing all the data exchanges required to keep a complex facility operating, an MSI creates a value proposition that enables alignment of data producers with data consumers. It creates the common standards that mitigate the scope gaps that would otherwise occur if all vendors who install a system or pieces of equipment were left to complete this installation without any guidance on how the data generated is controlled and consumed.

Study after study confirms that spotty or nonexistent coordination is the number one problem affecting technology implementation at most organizations. Collaboration among people planning, designing and installing the systems needed by airports is a case in point.

In a typical large-scale airport capital program, there are likely to be multiple design teams working under multiple contracts. Often, these designs create procurement exercises where prime contractors may bring onboard their own teams to install the technology needed to complete their particular scope of work. Disparate designs, specifications, procurements and contractors can result in many chances for something to get out of sync.

That’s the value proposition for an MSI: providing the conceptual framework to centralize technology functions so that every design team and every contractor thinks and behaves in a consistent, coordinated fashion.

Thinkology and Handshakes

An MSI starts a conversation that focuses on who decides the rules for data exchanges. It’s a conversations at a basic level about what information is shared, what response it elicits, and under what circumstances that shared information is to be expected. Who documents the rules? How do we implement the rules? What are the business results we expect from those rules? These outcomes are all logical extensions of what the MSI does.

Think about the domino effect if there is a breakdown in how information gets shared, who receives it (or doesn’t), and when. The baggage you checked may up 1,000 miles from your actual destination. Or when your plane was taxiing toward a gate in Concourse C, but now instead is being redirected to Concourse B, a mad scramble may ensue for those needing to make a connecting flight.

Systems that do everything to make sure your trip is uneventful depend on thousands of timely interactions, and the scale of that complexity grows greater with each passing year. If power goes out for 15 minutes at one gate at a busy terminal in California, it creates a domino effect that reverberates from Singapore to the United Kingdom. It requires terminals across a vast network to begin the “thinkology” of what must happen to adjust schedules. Thinkology — a term coined to capture the multiple if-this-then-that scenarios that must occur in the event of something unexpected — is the concept that directs formulation of an MSI.

This concept always leads us back to these basic questions:

Do you know who needs data produced by any given system?
Do you have the data you need in the format you need it to be in?
When do you need data from another system?
Under what circumstances are you expected to send data to someone else, or receive data from them?
When there is an interruption, who is accountable for reestablishing connections?

The questions posed by an MSI are inescapable. Someone, sooner or later, always deals with them. Designs, specifications, documentation sets, integration matrices, test plans, commissioning and ORAT always deal with these questions, in at least one format and often at a considerable expense. The better question remains: Will all those stakeholders deal with them in a consistent fashion, or in a disjointed manner? Will impacts to schedules and budgets be minimized by deploying the MSI early in planning, or will we delay the inevitable at the cost of schedule impacts and budget hits?

Information sharing is like a handshake. When a person shakes hands with a good friend and promises to be there on a specific day and time, it signifies confidence and trust that they will do what they say.

The MSI is the handshake that symbolizes the trust that information being shared across multiple systems will work as expected, and that it is valid, correct and authoritative. It all works silently and effectively behind the scenes so that the likelihood of a completely uneventful trip is greatly improved.

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Author

Stu Garrett

Business Development Manager