2007 - An Overview of Trends in Aircraft Maintenance Program Development
2007 - An Overview of Trends in Aircraft Maintenance Program Development
2007 - An Overview of Trends in Aircraft Maintenance Program Development
ABSTRACT: The purpose of this paper is to describe the trends in aircraft maintenance program development during the last 50 years, including the reasons for the aircraft industry to change its view of maintenance. The major milestones and fundamental reasons for such development are also discussed and illustrated
in relation to a flow diagram, which shows the logical and chronological order of the trends. Finally, the paper describes some possibilities and challenges as regards applying Information & Communication Technology (ICT) within the emerging approach of e-Maintenance in order to enhance the surveillance of aircraft
maintenance program performance.
1 INTRODUCTION
Before 1950, technical items were mostly simple,
which made them reliable and easy to maintain. The
maintenance concept were mostly based on the belief that failures were mostly caused by wear and
tear and the common maintenance strategy was Corrective Maintenance. By the late 1950s, the second
generation of maintenance started, with the introduction of more complex items, mostly due to lack of
labor and high performance requirements. With increasing complexity and criticality of items, the importance of a preventive maintenance program for
failure management increased. However, one of todays major challenges remains how to determine
the success of such maintenance programs.
The first part of this paper provides some background to the airlines problems during the 1960s,
with a short discussion on efforts leading to the publication of the first systematic review of aircraft systems, known as the MSG-1 and the MSG-2 methodologies. Next, the efforts of United Airlines, which
led to the Reliability-Centered Maintenance (RCM)
methodology are described, outlining how the preventive maintenance concept was influenced by system level thinking. The effect of RCM on the MSG
methodology, which resulted in the publication of
MSG-3, will also be described. All these developments and trends are discussed with the help of a
flow diagram, which illustrates the developments in
a logical and chronological order.
Finally, the possibilities and challenges related to
e-Maintenance for the surveillance of an aircraft
the item from failing by applying Preventive Maintenance instead of relying on Corrective Maintenance.
In an effort to reduce the number of failures, industry concluded that, based on the accepted wear
and tear model of failure, every item had a fixed
age at which either complete overhaul or discard
was necessary to ensure safety and operating reliability.
Based on these concepts, there was a widespread
belief that all failures could be prevented by agebased overhaul. As a result, Time-Based Maintenance became the norm for Preventive Maintenance.
This kind of approach motivated the indiscriminate
use of overhaul or preventive replacement for all
items included in a Preventive Maintenance program. (Tsang, 1995)
Consequently, the failure rate increased rapidly
and maintenance costs grew accordingly. This
prompted the airline industry to look for new preventive maintenance concepts. In addition, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in the US was
concerned that the reliability of some engines had
not been improved by changing either the type or the
frequency of overhaul. The available data indicated
that although the frequency of some failures had
been reduced, many more had remained unchanged
or actually increased. These findings could not be
explained by using the accepted model of failure.
During this time, a new approach to maintenance
evolved within the aircraft industry. Based on analysis of failure data, it was found that the probability
of failure did not increase with operating age and the
traditional time-based policies were found to be ineffective for controlling the failure rate of many
items. (processonline, 2007)
During 1960, FAA was surprised that,
notwithstanding many previous efforts, it was not
possible for airlines to control the failure rate of a
certain type of engine, by changing the scheduled
overhaul policy. Moreover, due to congested continuous maintenance activities, fleet availability
dropped significantly, causing operation and maintenance costs to increase rapidly without equivalent
improvements in reliability. The reasons for the
problems mentioned above can be summarized in
the following nine areas:
4.
5.
6.
7.
1. Risk analysis was not considered in maintenance
analysis. The objective of the maintenance activities was mostly to retain the technical characteristics of the items, rather than reduce or mitigate the consequences of item failures.
2. The objectives of preventive maintenance were
not recognized. Consequently, the applicability
and effectiveness criteria for maintenance tasks
were not defined either.
3. The operating context was not considered in
maintenance analysis. Therefore, one mainte-
tial failure condition, in order to initiate preventive maintenance actions and thereby avoid the
functional failure or its consequences. (Moubray,
1997)
8. All the items of systems were considered for
maintenance regardless of the importance of
their functions for system availability. Hence,
limited maintenance budgets were not distributed in accordance with the importance of the
items function for availability performance of
the system.
9. Previous experience in the development of
scheduled maintenance instructions had revealed
that a program of effective maintenance measures could be developed through the use of logical analysis and decision-making processes.
Hence, there was a need for a structured decision
process to assess the maintenance requirements
of the systems, and to develop an applicable and
effective maintenance program.
In order to respond to the above-mentioned challenges and to find a proper solution, FAA formed a
task force, including representatives from both FAA
and American Airlines. The purpose was to evaluate
the effectiveness of traditional time-based maintenance, investigate the capabilities of scheduled
maintenance, and find the possible relationship between scheduled maintenance and reliability. These
analyses gave rise to the following surprising discoveries (Kennedy, 2005; Equipment Links, 2007;
processonline, 2007):
x
x
x
x
x
Failure Consequences
Approach
First Generation
Pre World War II
x
x
x
x
x
Second Generation
Post World War II
Third Generation
After Mid 1970s
RCM
Methodology
MSG-3
Methodology
MSG-1& MSG-2
Methodology
Using Condition Based
Maintenance
Failure Mode
Approach
Technical Characteristic
Approach
tional failures, and failure modes of an item. Furthermore, FMEA classifies the severity of each failure effect according to severity classification criteria
established by each program. Hence, the quality of
the RCM analysis strongly depends on the quality of
the FMEA execution.
The RCM logic requires an age exploration program for all maintenance tasks where reliable historical information is not available. It also requires
an independent auditing of all performed analyses,
see Nowlan & Heap (1978) and Moubray (1997). In
contrast to earlier methodologies supporting maintenance program development (e.g. MSG-1 and MSG2), the RCM methodology was based on:
Reactive Maintenance
Failure Rectification
Failure Prevention
Funtion Preservation
Figure 1: Changes and milestones in maintenance methodology development with regard to risk and failure management.
Methodology
MSG-1
(1968)
Characteristics
x
x
x
x
x
5 PUBLICATION OF MSG-3
A decade after MSG-2 was published and subsequent to Nowlan and Heaps report, US Association
of Air Transport (ATA) formed another task force to
review MSG-2 experience in 1979. In this review, it
became obvious that there were some areas for improvement (Overman et al., 2003; ATA, 2005):
x
x
x
MSG-2
(1970)
MSG-3
(1980)
Bottom-up approach
Component level
Maintenance process oriented
Aircraft type-related (Boeing-747)
Using On-Condition and ConditionBased Maintenance
x Same as MSG-1
x Generic document, non-aircraft typerelated
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
x
Generic document
Top-down approach
System level
Maintenance task oriented
Emphasis on structural inspection programs
More rigorous decision logic diagram
Distinction between safety and economy
Hidden functional failure treatment
Figure 2: Summary of some of the major conceptual differences and improvements between MSG-3 and previous versions of the methodology.
6 FURTHER DEVELOPMENTS OF
RELIABILITY-CENTERED MAINTENANCE
One of the most valuable efforts to develop RCM
methodologies was performed by the US Department of Defense (DOD), and was initiated by the
AD-A066579 report published in 1978. This report
was based on the principles of MSG-logic and was
the foundation of the most modern RCM methodologies. Based on that report, DOD issued several
documents related to RCM analysis; most notably,
Military Handbook (MIL-HDBK) 266, RCM Requirements for Naval Air-craft, Weapons Systems
and Support Equipment in 1981, which superseded
NAVAIR 00-25-400 for all applications of RCMdecision logic. It also applied the principles of RCM
(as covered by the DOD report and MSG-3) to Naval aircraft, weapons systems and support equipment. (Leverette et al., 2005)
In 1985, as another effort, US Air Force (USAF)
issued MIL-STD-1843: RCM Requirements for
Aircraft, Engines and Equipment. This standard
was similar to MSG-3, which was cancelled without
replacement in 1995. In 1986, DOD issued MILSTD-2173, RCM Requirements for Naval Aircraft,
Weapons Systems and Support Equipment (MILSTD-2173; Leverette et al., 2005).
In the early 1990s the DOD decided that new acquisitions should rely, as much as possible, on commercial or performance standards, instead of using Military Standards. As a result, a group called
ing tailored information such as decision support regarding appropriate maintenance activities for all
stakeholders independent of time, geographical location, or organizational affinity. Hence, the eMaintenance approach is not limited to the management of condition monitoring data, explicit technologies, or any specific support service solution.
(Candell et al., 2007)
One important source of information that supports
maintenance program surveillance is the maintenance database, which should be structured so that it
facilitates the seamless transfer of data to other databases (e.g. the maintenance work order system) and
analysis tools (e.g. RCM software) used by stakeholders involved in maintenance program development. However, it is also important that the maintenance database is kept under configuration control to
ensure that it reflects the latest design standard of
the aircraft and its indenture levels, to provide an
audit trail and to ensure the integrity and consistent
use of support data. The database should also be
kept up-to-date to reflect changes in customers use
and requirements and thereby provide the guidance
necessary for future maintenance program development. In this context, e-Maintenance facilitates the
use of one single maintenance database that is
shared by all involved stakeholders, which in turn
decreases the risk of redundant, contradictory, and
obsolete data (IEC 60300-3-14; Sderholm, 2007).
Another important source of information for
maintenance program surveillance is the maintenance work order system, which is used to initiate,
control and document specific maintenance tasks. As
stated in the maintenance program, a maintenance
task is either triggered by a predetermined time
measure (e.g. calendar time, number of flights, or
flight hours) or the items actual condition. The
work order is used to identify and plan required resources and to schedule execution of the work. Finally, it is used to record results, observations, and
resources actually used, which all provide the basis
for assessment and improvement of the aircraft
maintenance
program.
An
appropriate
eMaintenance solution should enable easy access to
the maintenance work order system and also integration with other maintenance systems. (IEC 60300-314; Candell et al., 2007)
Another important part of an e-Maintenance solution, which also is valuable for maintenance program surveillance, is Built-in-Test (BIT) systems included in the aircraft. Using BIT systems it is
possible to analyze the failures at the exact point in
time when they occur at a specific indenture level of
the aircraft during operation. Operational data that
should be monitored and recorded include data on
bus inputs, strain gauge and other dynamic data,
propulsion parameters, BIT failure data, and environmental data. Continuous monitoring of the aircrafts condition helps to identify the nature of in-
Candell, O., Karim, R., & Sderholm, P. 2007. eMaintenance 24-7: Theoretical framework, research, and applications. Technical report, Lule,
Lule University of Technology.
Candell, O. & Sderholm, P. 2006. A Customer and
Product Support Perspective of e-Maintenance. In
Uday Kumar et al. (ed.), Condition Monitoring
and Diagnostic Engineering Management; Proc.
Inter. Cong. Lule, 12-15 June 2006. Lule:
Lule University Press.
Equipment Links, 2007. What is RCM? Available
online:http://www.equipment-links.com/whati src
m .php, Access date: March 2007.
FAA, 2003. Continuous Analysis and Surveillance
System: Description and Models (DOT/FAA/AR03/70). Springfield, Virginia: National Technical
Information Service (NTIS).
IEC 60300-3-14: Dependability management. Part
3-14: Application guide. Maintenance and maintenance support. Geneva: International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).
Karim, R. & Sderholm, P. 2007. Application of Information and Communication Technologies
(ICT) for remote support services: Transferring
experiences from an e-Health solution in Sweden.
Submitted for publication.
Kennedy, R. 2006. Examining the Processes of RCM
and TPM. Available online: http://www.plantmaintenance.com/articles/RCMvTPM.shtml, Access date: November 2006.
Leverette, J.C. & Echeverry A. 2005. RCM in the
Public Domain: An Overview of the US Naval
Air Systems Commands RCM process. Reliability Centered Maintenance Managers Forum,
Florida, 9-11 March 2005. MaintenanceConference.com
MILSTD-2173: Reliability Centered Maintenance.
Washington D.C.: Department of Defense.
Moubray, J. 1997. Reliability Centered Maintenance. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Nakata, D. 1984. An Introduction to MSG-3. SAE
Aerospace Cong. & Exhi., California, 15-18 October 1984. Society of Automotive Engineers.
Nowlan, F.S. & Heap, H.F. 1978. Reliability Centered Maintenance. Springfield: National Technical Information Service (NTIS).
Overman, R. & Collar, R. 2003. The Complimentary
Roles of Reliability Centered Maintenance and
Condition Monitoring; Int. Main. Conf., Florida,
8-9 December 2003.MaintenanceConference.com
Process online, 2007. Revolutionizing maintenance
with
RCM,
Available
online:
http://www.processonline.com.au/process/feture_
article /item_052004a.asp, Access date: March
2007.
Rausand, M. 1998. Reliability Centered Maintenance. Reliability Engineering and System Safety
60(2): 121-132.