Maintaining safety equipment and complying with the myriad of inspections, certifications, and due dates is a vital, but never-ending task. In the past, employee memories and stacks of printed Excel spreadsheets were relied upon to maintain safety standards and ensure certification compliance within the industry. Today, advanced technologies have enabled a new standard of safety inspection and record keeping. Aerotec Systems of Phoenix, Arizona, has developed its Advanced Terminal Information System, or ATIS, which has digitally automated safety equipment inspections and record keeping.

All critical safety equipment, from personal protective equipment to standby equipment, such as fire extinguishers or first aid kits, has a declared useful life, and ATIS provides up-to-the-minute verification of the status of each piece of gear. “Our ATIS software system gives companies a way to easily track their equipment’s inspections, life span/expirations, as well as its geographic location,” said Cody Stewart, Aerotec Systems co-founder. “We do this through our mobile app and our online dashboard.” Using a mobile device, inspection results are easily available on the ATIS digital dashboard, giving workers the confidence to use the equipment at hand to safely complete a task.

The ATIS system works by securing a Near Field Communication (NFC) tag (similar to Radio Frequency Identification tags) to a piece of equipment, which then can be scanned by a mobile application, on either Android or Apple platforms. This provides a digital automation assistant to log equipment inspections and maintain accurate records. The NFC tag correlates to the item’s serial number and, when scanned, brings up the “Equipment Detail” page on the ATIS online dashboard. Here, the item’s inspection and serviceability history are presented, including equipment status, location, and expiration dates.

From the “Equipment Detail” page, users can select the type of inspection they’re about to perform, whether it be pre-use, periodic, or annual. Once an inspection is selected, the worker follows the criteria prompts and selects the appropriate icons to indicate whether each inspection point is passed or failed.

Aerotec System’s ATIS also enables pre-use inspections of equipment. A worker scans the NFC tag attached to the equipment, and the ATIS mobile dashboard presents an icon-based inspection checklist to record the item’s condition. When the inspection is completed, the worker selects the certification tab at the bottom of the screen, which closes the mobile app and transfers the data to the ATIS database. The ATIS database maintains the inspection records for audit trails and to enable compliance with Federal safety equipment standards reporting. The dashboard enables control of system users, account permissions, and inspection criteria as well.

Winco Services of Aurora, Oregon, an MD-500 series operator flying MD-530s and MD-500Ds, recently installed the Aerotec Systems ATIS on the company’s fire extinguishers, Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs), first aid kits, as well as cargo lines and Human, External Cargo (HEC) lines. “We’re using the system for inspection cycles whereas before I'd have to use an Excel file and then I'd try to remember when annual inspections were due, where this is all automatic,” said Trever Walker, Winco Service’s director of Operations/Chief Pilot. “The Aerotec ATIS system is also beneficial if I want to locate a piece of equipment; I can just type in an aircraft N number and it'll give me the whole list of equipment. Or, if I knew the serial number of that piece of equipment it would work, too.”

Aerotec Systems’ new ATIS mobile application has brought safety inspection and reporting to a new level of sophistication and efficiency. More information is on line at: Aerotecsystems.com. For a visual demonstration of how the system works, visit the company’s YouTube channel at:

https://www.youtube.com/@AeroTecSystems