Page 45 - AAA SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2018 Online Magazine

GUEST COLUMN: MARK MARTIN
REACHING NEW

HEIGHTS

Unlocking new approaches to more effective
commercial aviation maintenance planning

irline operators are witnessing an unabated pace of
change in the commercial aviation industry. Oliver
Wyman figures show 58 per cent of aircraft in service
Awill be new-generation by 2027, alongside a continued
growth in air travel demand, and a maintenance, repair and
overhaul (MRO) market set to grow over 25 per cent in under
a decade from US$77.4 billion to just over US$114 billion.

Yet with the next-generation of technologically advanced air-
craft entering service and fleet sizes growing larger than ever
before, maintenance scheduling, planning and execution has not
advanced at the same pace. In the highly competitive commer-
cial aviation market – where margins are small, and expenditure
is high – effective maintenance planning has the potential to
increase profit.
Mark Martin is Director, Commercial
By introducing better planning capabilities, operators can make Aviation Product Line, Aerospace &
the most of the resources they have, with the end goal of being Defense Business Unit, IFS
able to cost effectively service more aircraft with the same to-week or month-to-month, spreadsheets
number of maintenance staff – and generate the most revenue cannot provide accurate answers to strategic
out of each aircraft. business questions such as: How many new
aircraft can we support? What will it look like
Unfortunately, many planners are still generating their main- if we add a new aircraft type in four years?
tenance plans in spreadsheets. That might be fine for a plan What happens if we use external MROs for
created solely by calculating start and end dates, but it does this fleet?
nothing to make the planning process more efficient or to enable
more strategic planning. Long Range Fleet
Maintenance Planning
Fleet Planning Easily Overwhelmed Managing a fleet of next-generation aircraft
Manually collecting and maintaining up-to-date aircraft usage requires next-generation tools. Automated
data and performing useful and effective planning work within a solutions must come to the fore to help deci-
spreadsheet becomes a time-consuming and daunting task. Add sion-makers choose the best plan to support
the complexity of aligning plans to accommodate constantly their business. Any supporting solution must
shifting labor and parts availability and other station constraints, be able to pinpoint the most efficient main-
and soon it becomes clear that planning by spreadsheets is not tenance plan tailored to an organization’s
an optimized process. unique requirements. The result should be
improved aircraft availability, check yield, and
At the highest-level, fleet maintenance planning must span all hangar utilization.
the aircraft carrying passengers across a sprawling network
of routes. Any changes to the plan can have huge knock-on Whether for single-base operations or glob-
effects further down the line – with schedules being torn apart ally distributed maintenance organizations,
in minutes when an aircraft becomes unavailable at short notice, the automation should enable faster and
or when parts and labor availability change. more efficient planning. Because even the
This is simply a day-to-day challenge. Looking forward, week- best of fleet plans can unravel in the blink

ASIAN AIRLINES & AEROSPACE September/October 2018 | 45