This process handles the preparation for a Heavy Maintenance visit. Preparing a maintenance visit allows:
Following are some of the benefits provided by the capabilities within the Prepare Maintenance Visit process:
For most service orientated businesses, a rough idea of the workload for the
business over the year is a good indication of how effective the business is or
can be operated. To facilitate this, it is possible to enter a number of
maintenance slots which represent potential opportunities for when an asset
could pass through the maintenance facility for a variety of maintenance
activities. During the initial phase of this planning, the facility manager will
review the capacity of the facility in terms of which assets can be supported
(size-wise and according to the approved capability of the facility), the
available resource hours, any facility downtime (maintenance, shutdown etc) and
the target budget for the year. The registration of maintenance slots allow
facility planners to register potential maintenance visits long before the
actual visit is due to take place. This improves the planning of the throughput
through a facility.
Once the manager has identified these slots, further negotiation between the
service provider and any operators can occur. Often maintenance facility
managers will also reserve slots for opportunistic visit requirements,
specifically in the Defense domain, where heavy maintenance providers also
support repair activities for damaged assets. Opportunistic visits could also
occur in Civil Aviation domains where operators have the option of using various
service providers which have the approved capability to support the asset, as
such facility managers also bear these requirements in mind when planning the
load within their facilities.
In many instances when the visit is being negotiated between the service provider and operator, a broad understanding of the basic type of maintenance event which will be required to be performed when the asset enters the maintenance facility is known, for instance, D-Check.
As the planning process continues to firm-up, confirmation of the real
maintenance requirements of the asset are confirmed and agreed between the
service provider and operator. This process relies on a vast quantity of
information being available in IFS/VIM (IFS/Vehicle Information Management)
before the full contents of the visit can be firmed up. If the asset is not
fully maintained using IFS/Fleet and Asset Management capabilities, which could
occur in instances where the service provider uses IFS Applications but the
operator uses their own forward/at asset maintenance application, a vast
quantity of information must be available in IFS/VIM before the full contents of
the visit can be firmed up. However, even if the service provider and the
operator share information, in the same instance of IFS Applications, it may be
required of the service provider to add and enhance the contents of details
pertaining to task codes, task cards and configuration.
As a minimum the following information needs to be created via IFS/Fleet and
Asset Management:
The Plan Maintenance Visit process therefore covers the relating of various maintenance task codes to the instance of the maintenance visit. As such, interval maintenance, modifications, serial faults, deferred faults and LLP replacements that are agreed to be included as part of the maintenance visit are added to the maintenance order which represents the instance of the visit. This could either be a maintenance slot which is firmed up with additional information such as the serial number and task codes which are applicable or a new maintenance order which could represent an opportunistic maintenance visit.
Once all task codes and task cards have been added to the maintenance order, the planner will arrange the contents of the visit to attempt to ensure the best planning throughput through the maintenance facility. The planner will review the ELS Gantt, and create dependencies between various task nodes and operations (resulting in a network of tasks) by using various inputs from:
The planner will also review any task cards which have not been grouped effectively into the most appropriate ELO (Execution Logic Order) node in the visit structure and move these to the most valid ELO.
Once the planners of a visit are satisfied that the plan is accurate and representative of the scope of the maintenance visit they will:
Often service providers and operators agree that a pre-visit inspection can physically be performed against the asset before it is scheduled to arrive at the maintenance facility. The objective of these inspection visit(s) is to gain further confirmation of the validity of the agreed content of the visit and also gain better understanding of the basic maintenance condition of the asset before it arrives at the service provider. As part of this process, additional tasks can be negotiated for inclusion, specifically where AD (airworthiness directive) and/or SB (service bulletin) and so on and so forth have been published but not incorporated against the asset. It is also possible to exclude some task from the scope especially in instances where interval maintenance of components and such were agreed during the planning phase of the visit, but where component changes have occurred between the original scope and the actual scope of contents for the visit.
Once an asset arrives at the service provider's facility it needs to be inducted. This potentially includes:
Once the operational data for an object is updated, interval maintenance, modification tasks and LLP replacements are calculated. This could in turn require the addition of task codes to the maintenance visit to ensure that the reliability of the asset can be maintained.