In today’s fast growing Component Maintenance and Engine MRO industry, it has become complex to manage their operations due to technological advances, changing business needs, increased competition, increased safety standards and rising costs. An MRO repairing the parts of third party customer would focus more on “On-time delivery”, effective usage of man power, Tools and Equipment, whereas, an airline that has its own shops would focus on maximum availability of the components which will help them in interruption-free operations. Achieving efficient use of maintenance labor hours, faster execution of jobs, increasing production yields without compromising quality and managing reduced stress from a better work flow, all add challenges to MRO business. It is obvious that these organizations would need software to capture the details of their operations, to increase the operational efficiency, reduce surplus costs to augment profitability. At the end of the day, anyone would expect a solution that makes his user’s job easy and reduces the costs by providing them with historical data to analyze and make precise & strategic decisions.
At Ramco, we have been focused on building applications for the Aviation Industry aimed at simplifying the life of the user. The Shop Maintenance Module is built in co-ordination with MRO specialists and futuristic thought processes and is capable of addressing the needs of large scale MROs as well as small Scale MROs.
The main goal of an MRO service provider is to ensure on-time delivery of spare parts. Planning the right people at the right place with the necessary tools, parts and estimations is the biggest challenge for a planner. Ramco’s Shop maintenance software helps in effective planning of the Components for Repair. The application helps large MROs following standardized processes based on their operational experience to build a hierarchy of tasks through Ramco ‘Repair Scheme’ functionality. Even small organizations can go for defining task hierarchies recommended in Technical Publications from OEMs. Proper repair scheme definition can impose following execution level control over maintenance activity:
- Work related control i.e. pre-defining mandatory jobs, task sequencing, routing requirements, re-executing or excluding repeated tasks etc.
- High level work estimates can be preloaded
Let’s take the example of a CFM-56 engine visiting the Shop facility for some maintenance events; it can be for regular Periodic Services of sub-assemblies or for a complete overhaul. In such a scenario, the application allows the user to define the Repair scheme for each module or even sub-assembly level in the engine. So when an engine comes for repair of a specific engine module (say Combustion chamber), planner simply initiates his workscope just by adding Combustion chamber module task to workorder. Similarly when an engine visits for a Complete overhaul maintenance, planner can add Overhaul task to Workorder which is a combination of all Module and Sub-Assembly tasks of the engine. Revenue of an MRO operator relies on how they manage to quickly Workscope the jobs and send estimates to customer. Hierarchical definition of jobs in repair scheme will considerably save planner’s time for Workscoping and task sequencing for various well known maintenance events.
Coming to small scale MRO organization who seldom follows standard Repair Scheme procedures, the software can plan operational level task. Optimum Materials, Resource and facility requirements required for carrying out each task can be well planned in advance. Work estimation functionality in Shop Maintenance Module helps planner in proper decision making whether to execute the job if it goes beyond economic limit.
Another typical scenario that a large MRO faces today is task sequencing after planning. For example, if an engine has visited shop in order to repair some of its major modules say Low-Pressure Compressor Module and Turbine Module, the planner initiates workscoping for both Engine Compressor Module and Engine Turbine Module into a Work Order followed by releasing it for execution. Trouble arises when mechanics end up with confusion in sequencing operational tasks of both Compressor and Turbine module. Precise sequencing of tasks in Work Order will be a laborious activity for a planner as well. This is where a feature like Master Sequencing comes into picture where sequencing of operational tasks can be pre-defined thereby easing the job of the planner.
We will see a few more such scenario’s discussed in detail in subsequent blog posts. Subscribe to stay tuned!
