Without Doubt the above subjects are very important in respect of the need to manage competence within both the Maintenance Management and Maintenance Delivery Environment recognizing improvement in the need to ensure competence. EASA mandated in February 2010 the need to ensure competence within the CAMO workplace. Commission Regulation (EU) No 127/2010 | EASA
This was amplified in 2011 when EASA again issued specific regulations associated with the management of competence ED Decision 2011-011-R - EASA - Europa
Maintenance Planning is a function of the Continuous Airworthiness Management Organization (CAMO) and both SAS and SOL offers a broad range of courses ranging from a single day to a 5 days integrated training.
Production Planning is an Essential function of the EASA 145 organization and provides a structure whereby the effective management of maintenance delivery process may be correctly coordinated and managed.
Technical Records is actually required for both the CAMO organization (Belonging to the Operator) and for the 145 organization (Belonging to the Maintainer).
When we consider the total contents of the aircraft work package we have a distinct number of elements:
a) Routine - these are the tasks which are packaged into maintenance checks and assigned from the aircraft maintenance program b) Service Bulletins, Mods and AD driven - this package forms a group of activates which can potentially be quite disruptive and as a consequence deserves due consideration in respect of the various planning considerations to support an effective delivery of maintenance c) Deferred Maintenance - Tasks which are carried over from Line Maintenance deferred defects or defects deferred in accordance with the MEL d) Defects found during the maintenance check inspection activities - These defects are discovered during maintenance inspection of the various aircraft zones
Airlines perform aircraft maintenance in order to ensure aviation safety and schedule punctuality. Sitting alongside this is the desire to also perform efficiently, arranging the manpower to have the optimum level of competence requires a considerable effort to ensure that the availability matches the requirement.
Whilst the “almost” universal approach to large aircraft maintenance afforded by MSG 3 delivers the potential of a very effective task orientated maintenance program, the very real challenge presented to Planners is how to decide on the best way to package these task so that the most effective workscope may be compiled to align with the available maintenance capacity.
Within every company exists the balance between availability, utilisation and maintenance requirements to understand fully the criteria which is applicable and to make focused decisions becomes the key to optimising the cost of maintenance.
In reality, with MSG-3, Block & Phased are practically the same thing with the "phased" term being more standard - where tasks are added to standard A, B, C checks as the aircraft ages, or utilization (hrs/cyc) progresses, which are due with a specific threshold and repeating with an interval time. (Since the advent of MSG-3 which was the game-changer and a true "block program" in higher level checks has now pretty much disappeared.)
Essentially packages are developed by selecting maintenance tasks into convenient, checks which are appropriate for the type of operation and can range from short overnight checks to down times of a few days and everything in between.
The regulatory obligations to ensure that the correct maintenance is performed may be found in EASA Part M Subpart C. It is well known that after expenditure on fuel, the cost of aircraft maintenance is one of the most significant overheads, as such it also presents opportunities to optimize which may in turn lead to savings.
We also need to consider the danger of “under maintained aircraft”. A company can lose its reputation and become associated with an unreliable service, whereas building up a reputation for sterling operation may take a long time.
It is critical for Operators to not only achieve but to maintain high standards of both a safe and a reliable services, as well as to pay attention to optimizing their profits.
There are a number of measure which operators may use to demonstrate effective maintenance, reliability data being a leading factor amongst them.
When we talk about Human Factor (HF) related issues within the Maintenance Planning environment we need to consider also that often visibility of the outcome is moved to another area of the business. For example if due to planning considerations work is loaded onto the check in an uneven way then it is possible to create an environment where we see commercial pressure, which as we know may directly lead to stress and the possibility of an unwanted HF event.
Another issue also relating to visibility may be connected with the iceberg theory of accidents and incidents. We know that for every significant incident or accidents which occur there are maybe 10 externally report able events (to the regulator) and 30 internally report able events, (to the quality or safety system) however there are additionally in region of 300 unreported transgressions which not only go unreported, but may in fact when considered in isolation appear to have minimum direct consequence, nevertheless may in fact become either precursors or contributors to a more serious event.
The MPD is the source document for the initial maintenance program. The Maintenance Planning Document (MPD) contains all the Maintenance Review Board (MRB) requirements, as contained in the Maintenance Review Board Report (MRBR) together with all additional mandatory scheduled maintenance requirements.
Whilst the MPD is the document required for the initial aircraft operator’s maintenance program it is by no means mandatory to comply in every case with subsequent changes to the MRBR.
In fact following the accumulation of reliability data it is quite possible for the Maintenance Program tasks to be escalated beyond the initial periodicity. Savvy Operators will use reliability data and other indicators to develop more effective planning processes which may very well include task escalation.
Aircraft Production Planning belongs to the Maintenance Organisation and is related to the size of the organisation, from a very humble structure to an intensive business management process.
There is much opportunity available within the Production Planning business area to deliver savings and the challenge is to identify efficient business processes that can be used to gather the data, analyze and measure the opportunities and finally to act on this.
The training and management of competence is often overlooked for the maintenance planning group and their role and responsibilities considered as providing administrative support to the “Engineers” rather than managing and controlling an effective delivery. Together with a limited acquisition of “Data” leads to general under performance within the business area. (This in no way should be construed as impacting the regulatory obligations which is not under question as part of this submission.) The objective of Production Planning is quite straightforward.
The Continuous Airworthiness Management Organization “CAMO” is essentially responsible for 4 primary functions: Planning, Technical Records, Engineering, and Reliability. These groups work together to ensure that the Aircraft remain fully compliant with all requirements concerning the aircraft maintenance management and associated oversight.
Within the CAMO department the Maintenance Planning Group has a range of responsibilities including the delivery of the aircraft maintenance work package to ensure the aircraft remains fully compliant with the Maintenance Program. However this is only part of the story, in a way this could be considered to be the “fixed” portion of the workload, as it does not fluctuate rather it is based on the Maintenance Planning Document “MPD”.
