Page 46 - AAA SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 2018 Online Magazine

of an eye, any modern fleet planning solution should enable maintenance visits, there has to be a new
multiple planners to quickly and easily modify, merge, and share approach. Stretched spreadsheets just can’t
plan updates. hack it. There are generic planning tools,
developed to fit general scheduling needs
The Devil is in the Line Maintenance Detail of multiple industries. But the lack of industry
imilarly, in line maintenance planning, there are funda- specificity in these solutions typically leads
mental challenges that need to be addressed, but on to failure when they are deployed in a com-
a shorter planning horizon. Efficient line maintenance mercial aviation setting. Some vendors offer
Smeans supporting a growing number of daily flights and planning tools more suited to purpose but
shorter maintenance windows without onboarding additional with rigid architecture and on-premise hard-
maintenance staff. But when committed maintenance activities ware. This makes them unaffordable to small
slip, it can impact operations on the day of scheduled mainte- planning departments. And for carriers with
nance. There is less time to take corrective action and, as this larger fleets, it signals the start of a major IT
responsibility is corrected by manual inputs, this introduces project with all the associated cost, risk and
the opportunity for human error and differing courses of action overheads.
depending on the planner in-charge. Fortunately, Software-as a-Service (SaaS)
This is easier said than done. On the rapidly changeable day solutions are now emerging in commercial
of operations, line maintenance organizations struggle to ensure aviation and bring new efficiencies for both
that maintenance resources are being properly allocated to the IT and business. SaaS solutions – such as
most important tasks, in complete alignment with the company’s two new solutions recently introduced by IFS
operational objectives. Ensuring aircraft availability in quantities for fleet and line planning -- are helping to
sufficient to support the flight schedule is a given. Beyond that, address the high capital expenditures air-
planners are often on their own to figure out which tasks are per- lines and MROs typically face for hardware,
formed first. The decisions planners make about which aircraft software and ongoing services and support.
to prioritize may differ depending on the objective: to maximize It is also becoming a vital tool in the new avi-
revenues, maximize seat availability or maintain schedule. ation IT landscape as a means to speed up
delivery of new capabilities and eliminate the
Granular View? Easy cost of purchasing and managing on-premise
Line maintenance planning solutions must dynamically react to technology.
schedule changes, as the solution continuously monitors the
maintenance plan for individual aircraft and identifies changes Maintenance and Operational
as they arise. Maintenance priorities must be contextualized Availability Glued Together
against corporate goals to drive business value from mainte- In a recent IFS Digital Change survey, almost
nance processes. Planners must be able to view all relevant 60 percent of commercial aviation respon-
information in a single screen, allowing them to use the software dents cited “operational availability” as a
to create executable plans quickly. significant industry challenge. Managing
operational availability and avoiding schedule
SaaS Tools Put Maintenance Planners delays begins in the maintenance planning
on Cloud Nine process.
As planners become responsible for more aircraft and more
Legacy maintenance planning and sched-
uling tools can no longer offer competitive
levels of availability. Automation in the plan-
ning process must now be a prerequisite in
any supporting solution. SaaS delivery pro-
vides the flexibility and scalability to cover
fleets as small as ten aircraft, and as large
as 1,000+.

The ripple effect of effectively planned main-
tenance is far reaching – aircraft are turned
around quickly, airworthiness is assured, and
maintenance costs can be kept in check.

46 | September/October 2018 www.GBP.com.sg/AAA