Repair Processes in Aviation: Towards a simulation-ready Assessment Model for the Evaluation of Process Alternatives

Efficient maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) processes in aviation ensure the operational readiness of aircraft. With increasing fleet sizes, the demand for coordinated, inter-aligned maintenance and repair processes increases. Many researchers focus on the development of new technologies and tools to optimize processes in aviation MRO. In academia, development of technologies is often assessed with respect to quality improvement, whereas in industry, repair processes are measured by economic considerations like duration and cost. Against the political and societal demands for sustainable aviation, the assessment of repair processes in aviation should also include ecological impacts like resource conversion. Therefore, for a detailed assessment of an MRO process, a multidimensional process model containing these aspects is developed in this publication. This model needs to meet the specific demands of aviation MRO: These processes are characterized by manual execution and individuality of process flows dependent on damage and part characteristics. The resulting lack of predictability incurs a significant overhead of communication, inspection and decision making. In addition to the high expectations regarding safety, quality and reliability, the capabilities and capacity of the repair facility are boundary conditions that need to be addressed. Therefore, a suited repair path needs to be chosen out of various repair alternatives defined by the availability of resources, technologies and tools. A modular, building block-based approach for the process model allows for various alternatives. As the degree of insight into part and damage increases along the repair process, the search space for the remaining process path is narrowed down. This systemically limited accessibility of a priori process planning leads to delays along the process and reduces its efficiency as the decision-making and planning for the next step is dependent on information generated in the previous step. Therefore, our approach allows for the simulation of various scenarios with information provision at different stages along the process chain as well as the evaluation with respect to the developed multidimensional assessment model.