Advanced Aero MRO Planning and Scheduling

The global aviation fleet is set to grow steadily over the coming decade, with global CAGR at 3.4%, and areas such as Asia-Pacific, seeing CAGR of 4.2%. This will significantly increase the demand for aircraft Maintenance Repair and Overhaul in the following years.

Increased demand will introduce new competitive forces and an increasingly demanding customer base. MRO companies will respond by capacity increase, overtime or hardware technology updates to accommodate the increase but this wont be enough or even if it would be enough the constraints on resources and the sheer cost of increasing capacity will be prohibitive.

A more intelligent way to handle the growth will be using game changer IT Technologies. Using advanced data analytics, predictive maintenance, data visualization and algorithmic supply chain planning and scheduling will enable companies to significantly increase the productivity and predictability of their MRO operations.

You may have heard the first 3 IT Technologies a lot recently but the last one, algorithmic supply chain planning and scheduling, is used in classical manufacturing for decades. This technology is based on Advanced Planning and Scheduling and automates and optimizes the generation of plans and schedules for supply chain and repair operations.

In MRO business, planning and scheduling is very complex. It requires planning and scheduling of thousands or tens of thousands of repair operations w.r.t tight physical resources, regulations, certifications, spare parts, etc. The environment is also very unpredictable since there are frequent rescheduling due to post strip/inspection repair needs, unplanned Aircraft On Ground (AOG) repairs and part cannibalization, machine breakdowns, spare part unavailability's, certified personnel absence, etc. Moreover, MRO plan, shop floor execution data and ERP data are not blended and visualized so the shop floor is a black box.

Singapore Aero Engine Services Limited (SAESL) uses Advanced MRO Planning and Scheduling
for its repair operations since 2007.

Algorithmic MRO planning and scheduling applications, such as ICRON Advanced MRO Planning solution, introduces 3 key concepts : Finite Capacity Planning and Optimization, High Performance, Automated Planning and Web Based Data Distribution and Visualization. Algorithmic optimization modeling introduced by ICRON can overcome significant MRO planning problems.

ICRON Aero MRO Planning and Scheduling is implemented in some large MRO facilities like Singapore Aero Engine Services Limited (SAESL) and Singapore Airlines Engineering Company. You can find the case study for SAESL here : ICRON SAESL Case Study.

Finite Capacity Planning allows better planning and sequencing w.r.t all your constraints will produce better and more realistic results. With finite capacity planning, you know any bottle neck and lateness due to these bottlenecks so you can take action.

MRO ERP systems (like SAP) assumes infinite capacity when detailed scheduling. This will mask a lot of lateness until it is too late. This is costly in MRO. Finite capacity planning allows you to see the results of capacity problems immediately. This allows you to take actions. It also helps you to answer repair history, current status and future schedule of the component in repair shops.

Optimization ensures the generated plan is the best possible one towards achieving your goals such as :

• Reduced Turn Around Times
• Reduced Overtime costs
• Reduced Total Setup times
• Reduced # of late jobs
• Increased customer satisfaction / revenue
• Increased facility productivity
• Increased workload balance on technicians