If you restore vintage warplanes, or are just repairing your private L1011, you need screws, bolts and other fasteners. General Aircraft is a great place to get them, with aisle after aisle of inventory on two floors, ready to ship at a moment's notice.

Keeping track of so large a number of items, and the certifications without which they are worthless, requires a sophisticated and reliable inventory system.

To the left you see part of the old inventory control system, still in use for items with no recent sales history. This is the stuff we used when I was in this business - a lot more years ago than you need to know about.

The new inventory system, provided by IST (Integrated Systems Tecnology), resides on a Unix host computer.

Here we see the computer that interfaces with ILS (Inventory Locator Service), an on-line inventory system which makes it possible for aircraft mechanics to find the parts they need.

Automation Access is working with General Aircraft to set up a system to transfer inventory information directly from the in-house system to the on-line service without hand entry. This will allow General Aircraft to put more of it's inventory on-line, and keep that information up-to-date with much less labor.