Preventive Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul

By making better use of information and data tracking technologies, airlines can cut maintenance costs while improving services for flyers—and up their performance levels.

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Airline maintenance and repair is a chief culprit in flight delays and cancellation. This is frustrating for travelers and expensive for the airlines. A typical airline spends about 10 percent of its total costs on maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO). This is the third highest operating expense after wages and fuel. By making better use of information and data tracking technologies, airlines can cut these costs to eight percent of total operating costs while improving services for flyers.

A new cost reduction program, the Predictive MRO approach from Accenture, improves:

• Maintenance predictability
• Flight schedule reliability
• Airline safety regulation compliance

Two of the most expensive assets an airline has—aircraft and people—are also keys to long-term profitability. Today, an aircraft maintenance technician (AMT) spends at least 50 percent of his/her time on administration. Such interruptions are costly, unproductive and diminish employee motivation.

Few airlines use their most useful and abundant asset—information—very well. And, maintenance, repair, and overhaul is an incredibly data intensive activity.

For it to run smoothly, data needs to be collected and shared between original equipment manufacturers, airlines, suppliers and other vendors. Most of the information never makes it beyond just being data trapped in isolated computer systems.

When an aircraft comes in for regularly scheduled maintenance, more than 50 percent of the work typically turns out to be non-routine. This unplanned work can delay the return of an aircraft to service.

Airlines can reduce the time it takes to maintain the fleet and save money with two key steps:

• Reduce job interruptions by the right parts and tools in the hanger.
• Manage aircraft maintenance schedules more efficiently to reduce unexpected non-routine activities.

Technology can track maintenance records by individual tail number and part or serial number. The information sits centrally, available to any employee in every one of the airline's facilities. Every time an AMT maintenance worker touches an aircraft, information can be gathered and checked in real time, allowing for faster decisions and execution. Other new technologies allow sensors on board to recognize small performance changes that foretell problems. This alerts maintenance controllers that something needs to be checked. Once alerted, the controller can decide what course of action to take:

• Replace the part on the ground at the aircraft's next stop.
• Pull the plane out of service.
• Wait for next scheduled maintenance work to address the problem.

In comparison, today's maintenance routine tends to be fragmented. Once in the air, a plane with a problem has to turn around for safety reasons, delaying passengers and wreaking havoc on a large block of the day's schedule.

Customers are unhappy in a number of cities, customer service employees have to scramble and a crew has to be paid for not flying. The missing data causes interruptions that increase airline costs and reduce customer service.

One reason customers feel airlines are not providing adequate customer service is the increase in late or canceled flights. Perhaps as important as the money saved by reducing maintenance time is the improvement in customer service. Being able to predict and perform preventive maintenance reduces the occurrence of these costly events, which is critical for airlines to improve their customer service.

"These problems are not going to be solved overnight," says Pierre Lumsden, Global Airline Industry leader. "Airlines need to recognize that this is a strategic initiative requiring a long term plan coupled with frequent, rapid implementations to generate benefits, and momentum quickly. The next generation solution needs to be robust, reliable, scalable and flexible."

New processes, supported by technology, can reduce costs and improve customer satisfaction. Airlines can do all this today through the Predictive MRO approach from Accenture.

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