An Exploratory Study to Evaluate Significance of Maintenance Planning in Reducing Aircraft Maintenance Turnaround Time Within Airlines Industry (original) (raw)
Related papers
2017
A study to examine Aircraft turnaround Management and the factors which affect turnaround at National Handling Services ,Victoria Falls International Airport ,Zimbabwe.The study used datasets from the handler with 201 cases from 4 airlines namely Air Zimbabwe,Fastjet Airlines, British Airways and South African Airways,5 in-depth interviews with key informants (opion leaders) collected in 2017.The quantitative data sought to examine factors influencing on time performance and delay of flights using frequencies and Fishers exact test to achieve the objective of the study.The qualitative was used to get a deeper understanding of the reasons why aircrafts delay and the way it was being managed using the thematic analysis approach .The study found that their several factors influencing turnaround time of fights the bivariate relationship between background characteristics and On Time Performance. The results showed that there was a significant association between air craft capacity, routing, airline, wheelchair passenger outbound, wheelchair passenger outbound and outbound passengers (pax). With respect to air craft capacity (significant at p<0.001), the percentage of flight delays increased with air craft capacity from 35.1% among 45-80 seats to 46.4% among aircrafts with 137-192 seats and 65.0% which was the highest among 192seats + .However, the percentage of flight delays was the lowest ( 10.0%) among aircrafts with 81-136 seats. There was a significant relationship between routing and On Time Performance (significant at p< 0.000). More than fifty percent (54.3%) of the international flights delayed or failed to meet turnaround time and 26.3% domestic flights delayed. Aircraft Turnaround Management System is developed based on a system framework to monitor aircraft turnaround operations at an airport. System implementation and test results indicate that real-time operation monitoring can potentially reduce delays occurring from airline operations. Proactive measures can be taken immediately by ground handling staff to reduce delays, once the risk of delays and potential delay propagation is identified. The availability of detailed operating data can help airlines identify the root delay causes from complex connections among aircraft, flight/cabin crew and passengers. In addition, these operating data also shed some light on the future development of aircraft routing algorithms in order to consider explicitly stochastic disruptions and delaypropagation in airline schedule planning.Objectives of the system are that to develop system that will assist users add flight details , calculate turnaround time and reporting of delays. The applications that were used to develop the software include:, PHP, HTML,CSS Style sheet, JavaScript, MYSQL server Database and These were to run on Windows 7/10 which are popular and user friendly. Uponcompletion of the system we should see improved process efficiency, quality of service, andconvenience to employees. The system is aimed at improving employee and customersatisfactions, reduce down time, improving worker moral. Finding for interviews and questionnaires shows that the entire organization was keen to adapt the new system and it shows that it will result in reduced costs and improved competitive advantage. More research into this area is needed, particularly research into a range of metrics for knowledge management .
Aircraft maintenance planning and scheduling: an integrated framework
Journal of Quality in Maintenance Engineering, 2012
Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to examine how certain limitations of the current approaches to planning and scheduling of aircraft heavy maintenance can be addressed using a single integrated framework supported by unified data structures. Design/methodology/approach -The "unitary structuring technique", originally developed within the context of manufacturing planning and control, is further enhanced for aircraft heavy maintenance applications, taking into account the uncertainty associated with condition-based maintenance. The proposed framework delivers the advanced functionalities required for simultaneous and dynamic forward planning of maintenance operations, as well as finite loading of resources, towards optimising the overall maintenance performance. Findings -Execution of maintenance operations under uncertainty involves materials changes, rectification and re-assembly. It is shown that re-scheduling of materials (spare-parts), resources and operations can be taken care of by simultaneous and dynamic forward planning of materials and operations with finite loading of resources, using the integrated framework. Research limitations/implications -As part of adopting the proposed framework in practice, it needs to be guided by an overall methodology appropriate for application-specific contexts. Practical implications -The potential direct benefits of adopting the proposed framework include on-time project completion, reduced inventory levels of spare-parts and reduced overtime costs. Originality/value -Existing approaches to aircraft maintenance planning and scheduling are limited in their capacity to deal with contingencies arising out of inspections carried out during the execution phase of large maintenance projects. The proposed integrated approach is, capable of handling uncertainty associated with condition-based maintenance, due to the added functionalities referred to above.
DIT MMEng Elctrical , 2023
Despite their market share dominance, Tanzania's two airlines (Air Tanzania and Precision Air) are experiencing flight delays, cancellations, and long-term grounding or removal of aircraft. All of these issues contribute to a decrease in aircraft availability performance, where aircraft maintenance management plays an important role. The goal of this paper is to improve aircraft availability performance on the Air Tanzania and Precision Air fleets by implementing a maintenance management system. To predict availability performance, maintenance management system was developed and applied to the two dominant aircraft fleets. According to the findings from this study, the current availability performance of aircraft is 53.4%, which is heavily influenced by the six identified factors. To increase aircraft availability to 90.9%, the identified maintenance factors should be addressed through the development of the maintenance system. The developed maintenance management system was found to be useful to other aircraft fleets for enhancing their fleet availability while addressing their maintenance challenges.
International Journal of Production Economics, 2019
This paper proposes a framework for the qualitative and quantitative characterization of maintenance work to support Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) organizations in performing capacity planning and scheduling. A quantitative assessment based on 372 maintenance projects collected at a Portuguese aircraft MRO confirms that a significant part of the maintenance work is stochastic in nature, given the amount of unscheduled maintenance. The proposed framework, entitled FRamework for Aircraft Maintenance Estimation (FRAME), is intended to allow MROs in managing this uncertainty throughout the maintenance planning process and comprises for that end a set of requirements for data treatment and a method for data analysis. The established requirements address important shortcomings found in the collected data that prevented the use of maintenance data for capacity planning and scheduling as is. The developed method for data analysis, entitled 3-Dimensional Maintenance Data Analysis (3D-MDA), is based on a space-time-skill coordinate system in which indicators are calculated from historical data to comprehensively characterize the expected maintenance work. Space refers to the aircraft work zone where maintenance is performed, time refers to the project work phase when maintenance is performed, and skill refers to the type of technicians required for maintenance to be performed. The established coordinates address the limitations of reviewed techniques by allowing accurate estimations of required resources for capacity planning and an extended range of constraints for maintenance scheduling. Being generic in nature, FRAME is applicable to maintenance in other industries, or even to other activities with due adaptations.
2010
This research was carried out in Martinair M&E department with the aim of analyzing its impact on the network performance and providing an efficient tool to predict delays and the On-Time Performance (OTP). To develop the predictive model, two research questions had to be previously answered: 1. What are the biggest M&E delays and unplanned ground time (UGT) drivers? 2. What are the factors that influence each driver? The methodology undertaken in this research is based on conventional analytical methods to identify the 'real' delay root causes and their relative importance. Historical data is extracted from Martinair's delay database for the fleet under analysis (Boeing 767 and McDonnel Douglas MD11). After that, in order to have an overview of the growth of the flight delays and UGT, several graphs are plotted with relevant information such as: rate and average time of delays and UGT per quarter; rate and average time of delay and UGT per station of departure; and rate and average time of delay and UGT per Maintenance Delay Categorization Groups (MDCG). Some interviews to people working every day in the key processes were made and fishbone diagrams were drawn to completely identify and understand completely the root causes. Statistical analysis (Binomial Logistic Regression and GLM-ANOVA) is applied to investigate the significance of the factors and their interactions and to build a regression equation which allows the development of the predictive model. The predictive model gives valid OTP results and enables managers and engineers to take preventive measures in order to enhance punctuality.
Maintenance Planning Optimisation for the Boeing 737 Next Generation
With the increasing need to reduce maintenance costs and increase aircraft availability, the need to simplify the way maintenance is planned and executed has become a major issue in the aircraft industry. Aircraft manufacturers continue to develop aircraft with a low maintenance demand, while airlines strive to keep their maintenance costs as low as possible. The Boeing 737 Next Generation (737 NG) is an example of such an aircraft, developed to demand less maintenance, as compared to previous versions of the Boeing 737 series. This 737 NG aircraft has a Maintenance Planning Data (MPD) document that is based on the Maintenance Steering Group (MSG)-3 philosophy. This is a task-based maintenance philosophy that looks at maintenance more at a task-level, as compared to previous philosophies, which were more focused on maintenance processes. Transavia airlines currently possesses 13 737 NG aircraft, but has a maintenance program that strongly borrows from other aircraft models in its fleet (namely the B 757-200 and the B 737-300).
Developing a Model to Predict Aircraft Maintenance Performance
Proceedings of the Tenth …, 1999
A three-pronged approach was adopted to the investigation of causes of maintenance errors in army aviation. In the first phase of the research, analysis of maintenance incident reports suggested that individuals were mostly at fault, making errors because they failed to follow ...
Aircraft maintenance planning and scheduling constitute planning, control and execution of materials (spare parts), operations (inspection, disassembly and assembly activities) and resources (labour, machines, transport equipment, etc.). This is a complex problem due to large number of components involved at various planning and execution levels, and the size/nature of resource-intensive maintenance projects. This paper reports current practices, problem areas and issues in aircraft maintenance planning and scheduling using both interfaced and integrated systems, based on a case study. The case study involves one airline in the region and an industry solution for aircraft maintenance planning and scheduling. Problem areas and issues within interfaced systems are reported, based on the selected airline while issues and potential improvements on the selected solution are identified based on a numerical study. Testing of maintenance planning and scheduling, based on maintenance order cycle within maintenance project, show that planning and scheduling methods in the industry solution can be enhanced by eliminating weaknesses of individual techniques involved. The paper concludes that key improvement areas on the planning and scheduling processes within an integrated system environment are simultaneous planning of materials, operations and resources involved, forward planning of operations/tasks, and finite loading of resources. Potential benefits from improvements include reduction in spare-parts inventory, shorter turn-around times and cost reduction in overtime.