Realization, a provider of Real Time Synchronization solutions for project execution, has unveiled a new Line Maintenance Management Solution for aviation organizations that has already proven itself with a major US airline. During the summer of 2011, that airline reduced flight cancellations by 62%, resulting in 1,650 fewer cancellations compared to the same period in 2010 and adding tens of millions of dollars to the airline’s bottom line. Realization’s Line Maintenance Solution is now generally available for commercial aviation operations worldwide.
A study conducted by Realization showed that two-thirds of all aircraft out-of-service hours were due to parts shortages.
Realization’s solution includes increasing a metric called Time-Control Health, which is the average amount of time allotted to aircraft before being put out of service due to unfinished scheduled maintenance items. Realization strictly limits the number of planes receiving maintenance during any given day to reduce work in progress. In addition, it requires that teams have all parts necessary to complete each task before starting work, which allows maintenance teams to actually complete all work on planes.
On the parts side, Realization found through experience that local managers forecast stock levels for parts based on historical usage and then over-react to parts shortages by overstocking that part. As a result, stock levels became imbalanced and, if a plane needed a part in a location that had not previously experienced that kind of repair, parts were unavailable and slow to arrive.
To counteract this problem, Realization’s Line Maintenance Solution puts all excess parts inventory in a central warehouse and requires that all maintenance locations stock a minimum number of all parts used by the airline within the past year. For one major U.S. airline, the number of hours that aircraft were out of service due to parts shortages declined by 26.7%.
