IT strategies for aircraft configuration management

8/11/2019 IT strategies for aircraft configuration management

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One of the most complex tasksfacing an airline engineeringdepartment today is the on-going task of conguration

management, that is controlling whichpart is valid in which position on anaircraft structure or sub-assembly. If handled well, conguration managementcan yield signicant cost savings andcontribute to airline safety management.

The world of aircraft maintenance ismessy and ever-changing and leads tomultiple congurations and constantlymoving actual physical structures.Maintenance activity, in particular,modies and re-modies (and indeed de-modies) structures and maintenancerequirements on components. Trackingthis on a complex aircraft structure canreach nightmarish proportions.

Conguration management isunderpinned by technical records. Theregulatory environment means thatairline engineering departments have tokeep track of these actual physicalstructures, and they must scrupulouslyrecord engineering and airworthinessdata for major components, sub-assemblies and the aircraft itself.

Conguration management andtechnical records management can absorbconsiderable resources. These includehighly paid engineers, who have to chasedown discrepancies in data and untanglethe puzzle of engineering information.

Configuration strategyOne of the rst issues for an airline to

overcome when choosing andimplementing any new IT system formaintenance repair and overhaul (MRO)management, is to decide on theapproach it intends to follow forengineering conguration management.

In simple terms, what level of detailshould an airline create and track withinthe IT system for an aircraft orsubsystem, and why?

Several factors inuence this decision.

First, what level of maintenance is carriedout by the airline? If the airline managesall its heavy maintenance in-house, andhas backshop capabilities to repaircomponents and major assemblies, it islikely the electronic conguration wouldbenet from being extremely detailed.This will enable airlines to manage themaintenance of major components andassemblies with a high degree of control.It will assist the repair shops by givingthem a signicant level of electronicvisibility as they move through theteardown, repair and rebuild process.Engineering change management will alsobe simplied if the electronic data aremodelled to this level. Conversely, if theairline outsources everything, aircraftcongurations may be very simple, andeven non-existent.

Another factor in the decision may bethe type of contract the airline has inplace for the aircraft. For example, theaircraft lease may contain some clausesthat require the airline to track certainmajor components or maintain certaincongurations.

Engines are an example. If an airlinehas a power-by-the-hour (PBH) contractfor its engines, it may only need to trackthe installed engines. The PBH vendormay take care of everything else, such astracking engineering data likeairworthiness directives (ADs) andadvising the airline when they need totake action. If there are specic clauses inthe PBH contract, however, then theairline may need to track particular lifelimited parts (LLPs) more carefully. Eventhen it may not require the engine to bebuilt electronically as a structure, sincethese parts are usually not replaceable onthe line. If there are some high valuecomponents that can be replaced on-wing(for example the fan blades) then it may

be benecial to track these electronicallyin the IT system. This is because they maycarry a specic warranty or guarantee,which the airline needs to track in orderto implement it.

Two issues are crucial to the successof many MRO IT projects. First theairline must realise that once a decisionon concept or philosophy is made it isdifcult and expensive to reverse andchange direction. Second, the decisioncan have a very wide-ranging, deep andsometimes surprising impact right acrossthe maintenance operation. Dick Wallis,vice president sales at Software SolutionsUnlimited (SSU), explains,Conguration management is like aframework for the whole system that isestablished at the start of a project. Anairline needs to ask itself how it wants tomanage the maintenance of its aircraftand major assemblies, and whatregulations and requirements it mustcomply with. It also needs to ask whatresources it has to establish theconguration framework, populate thedatabase, and continue to manage theconguration data.

For any Ultramain implementation,we start by introducing the SSUconguration philosophy to the projectteam and management, and then givethem time to absorb and reect on theconcept. They need to fully understandthe capabilities of the application, theimplications for data set-up and ongoingmanagement, the benets of differentoptions, and the nal impact acrossdepartments, continues Wallis. Theyneed to understand that there willinevitably be tension within the airline.For example, what is good forengineering will cause additional workand effort for maintenance mechanics.Only then can they make a decision onwhich philosophy they wish to adopt.

In some cases, the idea of conguration management may be all butabsent. This leads to a challenge in thethought process and many organisations

struggle to absorb this new approach andfully understand the implications andbenets of a new philosophy. Anotherissue is whether one or several models arerequired to cover an entire eet.

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ISSUE NO. 39 FEBRUARY/M ARCH 2005 A IRCRAFTCOMMERCE

A high degree of control in aircraft configuration management andtechnical records can realise large savings for airline engineering departments. Geoff Hughes analyses what airlines have to consider whendeveloping an IT strategy for configuration management.

IT strategies for aircraftconguration management


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Aircraft structure processSo what does a typical aircraft model

look like? How many levels of structuredoes an airline normally track? Typicallyan airline will choose to model an aircraftwith several hundred tracked positions(or perhaps even thousands) on astructure. These will usually go down tothree or four sub-levels of substructure.The usual major assemblies that will bebuilt as separate models are engines, APUand landing gears. In some extreme cases,airlines have built structures with severalthousand tracked positions.

Hannes Sandmeirer, senior directorcomplex MRO and depot repair atOracle explains their perspective onconguration management. Oracle hasbeen evolving the complex MROapplication for four and a half years,building it up to meet the needs of airlinesand aerospace & defense (A&D )companies. Building the aircraft modelinvolves a challenging series of decisions.First, which positions should be tracked?Much of this comes from how muchreliability detail the airline wants toanalyse. Next, should a position bemodelled with a structure of its own, forexample the engine? The level of detail isdetermined by how much control theairline wants to exert over individualcomponents tted to complex assemblies.In our experience, an engine is typicallymodelled to six or seven sub-levels. Weare close to going live with our rstairline and are at the implementationstage with another two.

Having made a strategic decision onconcept, the building process starts with

the source data. These usually come fromthe OEM, although airlines may oftenhave some data in existing IT systemsscattered around the organisation.However, simply entering OEM data into

the new MRO system using an electronicdata loading tool can be problematic.First, the data may not be structured thean airline wants to manage aircraftmaintenance. Maintenance contracts maybe structured in such a way thatmaintenance events need to be trackedvery differently to the way the OEMenvisaged. Second, there simply may betoo many data to load and maintain if they are taken directly from the OEMsystem. The airline is probably better off analysing its maintenance operation andmodelling its engineering reference dataaccordingly.

Airlines need to realise that the databuilding process is not a one-time event.More than just the engineering referencedata will need to be actively managedover the life-cycle of the eet.

Using a complex line replaceable unit(LRU), such as a ight managementcomputer as an example, if a masterreference conguration data is built witha high degree of detail, this will provide arich data source for the reliabilitydepartment.

Consider what happens when anaircraft-on-ground (AOG) situationoccurs. The part is received and all thatdata needs to be entered quickly into thecomputer system for that LRU, whichneeds to receive and assign serial numbersto the LRU, and track every position onthe assembly. Warranty information andling counters may have to be initialised,as well as a check made for engineeringchange directives, such as ADs that mightapply.

Sometimes, not all the data areavailable at the time of receipt, and in the

heat of the moment some of the data maynot be completed. If the aircraft needs tobe put back into the air, who in theorganisation will be responsible for thenecessary data clean-up? If it is not

completed, then much of the good workwill be undone. AuRA has beendeveloped to deal with this issue quicklyand cleanly, without disrupting theprocess ow of getting a part into theorganisation, and out to the mechanic,and without compromising dataintegrity says Mark Ogren, vicepresident sales and marketing at MIROTechnologies (formerly Spirent). WithAuRAs auto-receiving function, acomplex assembly can be brought in andvalidated, even if the data on serialnumbers are incomplete. Automatic e-mail alerts within the systemcommunicate incomplete transactions tobe queued for engineering to nish off data entry. Many of our clients likeEmbraer, Continental Expressjet, TNT,SAS and Frontier benet from thisfeature.

Reference structure optionsWhat types of data should be built

into the structure? Structuralidentication data can be managed inseveral ways. The airline may choose toimplement its own nomenclature toidentify positions. Alternatively, and moreusually, a conguration model will be setup using international standards such asthe air transport association (ATA)system. It provides a standardised anduniform means of reference in allequipment design and maintenancerelated documentation/communication,such as task records, fault isolationmanuals, service bulletins (SBs) andaircraft and component conguration. Itprovides a uniform basis for structuringmaintenance performance indices,especially those related to reliability.

For Airbus operators, functional itemnumber (FIN) may also be used, inconjunction with ATA Chapter. Theequipment on the aircraft is identied bya unique identier designated FIN. Thebasic element of the FIN is a two lettercode indicating to which system circuitthe equipment belongs. To this code are

added prexes and/or sufxes whichprovide the unique identication forindividual items of equipment. Forelectrical equipment (any componentwith an electrical connection) the FIN is

AIRCRAFTCOMMERCE ISSUE NO. 39 FEBRUARY/M ARCH 2005


The aircraft configuration master layout in AuRA, from MIRO, is typical of most software systems.The aircraft is modelled in a tree structure for ease of use, and positional data can be tightly controlled for interchangeability and serialeffectivity rules.


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of the form 2CA1; where 2 is the secondcomponent in the circuit known as CA,CA is the two letter code for the circuit,and 1 is the sufx indicating the systemnumber (in this case the rst of severalsimilar systems).

The FIN sequence number serves todifferentiate between mechanical andelectrical equipment. Sequence numbersbelow 5000 are reserved for electricalFINs and the sequence numbers equal toor above 5000 are reserved formechanical FINs.

Next, the IT system must have partfamily data assigned to each position.The part data are the prime connectionbetween the engineering organisation andfunctionality, and the materialmanagement organisation. Theengineering reference data control andvalidate which parts the materials groupissue to a job request, or load them into abill of material kit for an aircraft check.Loading these reference data will enablean airline to more tightly controlairworthiness and quality assurance onan aircraft.

The IT system also needs to beexible enough to cope with manypermutations of part attributes. Forexample PART A-1 can be tted to thereference conguration of a CFM56-5C4model and is the preferred part, whereasPART A-2 is a two-way interchangeablepart, but can only be tted to engineserial numbers from 5600 to 5670 of thatengine model. Moreover, PART A-3 canalso be tted, but only if SB2003-72-00has been applied to the engine. All thisinformation can be loaded into mostsystems and rule sets can be dened.One of the strengths of Oraclescomplex MRO product suite is theexibility to build any number of sophisticated rule sets to controlallowable conguration matched andinterchangeability-intermixability laws,says Sandmeirer.

The next major group of referencedata that most IT systems will model inthe conguration is the maintenancerequirements for either aircraft, majorassemblies, or individual components.

Normally component maintenancemanual (CMM) items are attached tocritical or high value parts, at the positionin the structure that the component couldpossibly be tted. The CMM requirement

may differ, depending upon the locationof tment. This publication has alreadylooked in depth at the various capabilitiesof MRO systems in use today (seeManaging maintenance plans with IT systems, Aircraft Commerce, December2004/January 2005, page 37) .

One of the subtleties that somesystems offer is the ability to applysophisticated ling counters to positionsand components. For example, if there isno APU counter available on the APU,the system may choose to compute APUhours, from a base life of ying hours,using a factor to account for groundrunning time.

Additional reference data that couldbe added to the structure are specicdetails on warranties or performanceguarantees, minimum equipment list(MEL) and conguration deviation list(CDL) information, whether the item iscritical to Etops or whether it isCATII/CAT III sensitive instrument.

Most vendors have all the abovefeatures and have exible modellingcapabilities. Beyond these capabilities,there are some interesting additionalfunctions with each vendor. For example,MIRO Technologies can ease theengineering burden for managingmultiple congurations of the same basicaircraft model. Ogren goes on to explain:AuRA tracks multiple variations in theconguration of your aircraft model withminimal user input. Once the primaryconguration is entered into AuRA, thestructure can be replicated, and onlythose changes that apply to the newmodel are made. The revision status of your model congurations are clearly

labelled so you will never question whichmodel is the latest. This is one of the keyfeatures that customers like ScandinavianAirlines will use to reduce theirengineering costs signicantly. Ulf

Nystrom, head of Technical Operationsat Scandinavian Airlines adds, TheAuRA implementation will give us thepowerful system we need to strengthenour maintenance and engineeringoperations and substantially improveefciency and lower costs. This newAuRA system solution will save usmillions of dollars annually in systemsoperations and maintenance.

Another capability used by manyAuRA customers is the local positionfacility. This allows a rapid modicationof a basic model conguration to bemade for temporary tracking of items forengineering or warranty concerns.

One of the features of the OraclecMRO application in the congurationmanagement area is the ability to set upsub-eets with a main aircraft model.This is a real benet for many airlinesmanaging large mixed eets. OraclesSandmeirer comments: This functionallows customers to identify commonsub-groups of tail numbers which share acommon engineering master structure,but have different operatingcharacteristics that carry specic anddifferent maintenance requirements. Forexample, an airline might operate ve of its aircraft in sandy desert conditions. Wecan set up a eet in cMRO that eitheradds additional inspection tasks, orengine wash tasks, and may reduce theexpected life of the hot-section HPturbine blades for this sub-eet.

Wallis from SSU says that Ultramaincan also assist planners faced withchoices of multiple possiblecongurations. At the touch of a button,the Ultramain application will show each

possible conguration and colour thestructure red to indicate components thatare out of stock. The planner has a visualcue for which congurations theorganisation can build with available


ISSUE NO. 39 FEBRUARY/M ARCH 2005 A IRCRAFTCOMMERCE

Oracles complex MRO software can handleextremely sophisticated configuration rule sets.Rules can be chained together or be activated onthe basis of other configuration changes.


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material, without having to make furtherqueries.

New to the aviation MRO market isRAMCO from India. Originally an ERPsystem, RAMCO recently broke awayfrom a relationship with Boeing(Enterprise One) to start marketing itssolution independently. The RAMCOapplication is based upon a exiblesoftware architecture calledVirtualWorks. This is software to buildsoftware and gives innite exibility andpossible re-conguration of its MROsolution. One nice feature of the system isthe ability to apply minimum equipmentlist (MEL) and conguration deviationlist (CDL) restrictions to its structures.

RAMCO can hold the entire MELand CDL and relate it directly to partpositions on the aircraft, claimsNamrata Ahuja, UK sales manager atRAMCO. What this means is that wecan monitor the condition of a particularcomponent and relate this condition, orindeed the presence of the component, tothe MEL requirements of anothercomponent in a different position on thestructure. This will immediately alert, andprovide control of, the airworthinessstatus for deferred maintenance actionsrelated to the MEL or CDL.

Technical recordsOne of the main reasons for

expending so much effort onconguration management, and forinstalling a new software module orMRO system, is to ensure that technicalrecords are continuously validated foraccuracy and compliance with regulatoryrequirements.

This brings several benets. First, if new technology is deployed across themaintenance departments, and

particularly out into the areas wheremaintenance actions occur, then remove-install actions and engineering changeembodiment actions can be validated asthey happen. This will eliminate several

layers of data transcription and dataentry, which removes staff overheadcosts. It also reduces the chance of humanerror during the data entry process,which again brings further benets of overhead cost reduction by removing theneed to disentangle the data corruptionthat is inevitably introduced when there islittle or no conguration control.

A classic example is an old legacysystem that allowed 14 individualserialised nose landing gears to beelectronically installed on one aircraft tailnumber. This raises two key questions.First, which unit is actually installed onthe aircraft, what are the life counts on it,and what are the accurate maintenancerequirements? The second concerns thelocation of the other 13 landing gear sets:are they in a supply loop, installed onanother aircraft, or are they in inventory?Essentially they are totally lost as far asthe airline is concerned. Soon theelectronic software system falls intodisrepute and is no longer trusted to helpmake management decisions. Expensivetask forces are then needed within theairline to try and identify and ndexpensive components.

MRO Software Inc from the USA hasits own unique approach to help solvethis issue of building and correctingtechnical records data throughconguration management technology. Itrecently recognised and understood theimportance of strong congurationmanagement, and rather than building itthemselves, acquired the Raptor softwareproduct from Raptor Inc in 2004 to addto its MAXIMO product suite. Raptoris based upon three key pillars, says DonBeahm, lead product manager at MROSoftware. The rst pillar is the rulesrepository which holds the referenceinformation on the as-built structure,

with all the rules about allowable ts.The concept is based upon variousindustry standards, such as MIL-STD-1388 revision 2B and AECMA2000. Thesecond pillar is the component life

accounting functionality, which trackswhere a serialised component has beenand what are its life counts. The thirdand nal pillar is the compliancefunctionality or operational statusmanagement. This compares the rst andsecond pillars of data and reports anybreaches of the rules. Our experience isthat an airline will track as manypositions as possible, typically around1,000. Because Raptor is so powerful, itcan easily cope with this level of complexity. Our rst customer is goinglive, and the data population for this typeof level of aircraft structure only tookthree months. One of our unique featuresis the way Raptor handles the actualstructure data for remove and installs.Rather than storing each remove orinstall as a transaction, we hold a log of each action, and each usage update. Thismeans that if subsequent technical recordchanges are needed, for example thecorrection to a remove or install action,all that is required is a change to therelevant log entry. It also means that anactual structure can be viewed at anypoint in its history. We can create anactive derivation of an actual build status,and post correct it with a log of thatcorrection. The Federal AviationAdministration (FAA) loves thiscapability. It also means the dataconversion effort can be more tolerant of unclean legacy data and a client can startusing the system and post-cleanse thedatabase.

Financial benefitsOne of the big nancial winners for

an airline, if they get good control of conguration management, is thematerials area. Typically, parts arestocked based upon historicalconsumption trends, or projected usagebased upon probabilistic models. Thetrick is to combine the demands for partsin the same basic part family, and identifythose unique part numbers that are nolonger usable or desirable, or aresuperseded and should not be used. The

challenge is to control the running downof these unusable stocks as quickly aspossible, and to stop restocking theminadvertently.

The rules about when a part can be

AIRCRAFTCOMMERCE ISSUE NO. 39 FEBRUARY/M ARCH 2005


The minimum equipment list (MREL) limitationscan be imported into RAMCOs MRO software, toautomate the process of controlling deferred defects and ensuring airworthiness and safety issues are not overlooked.


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used during the introduction of amandatory change directive like an AD,or the internal airline rules about the useof parts that are superseded forengineering, reliability or economicreasons can be complex. A well managedconguration master database will notonly ease this process considerablythrough signicant automation, but itwill also prevent the airline from buildingup obsolete stock.

The key is for the congurationmanagement process to start withmaintenance creating the demand for apart, not the point at which the remove-install happens. This will prevent thewrong part or part dashnumber/modication status being issuedto a maintenance job in the rst place. Ina dynamic maintenance environment,with multiple engineering change actionoccurring in parallel, this is a morechallenging task than it might rstappear.

Paperless operation is the ultimategoal of the airline MRO environment isthe paperless operation. In this concept,all maintenance action is controlled on-line by a centralised database, the correcttechnical documents are available in realtime, data entry is validated as it happensand, in particular, mechanics actions areregulated by a tight conguration controlcapability. Technical records are built inreal, or near-real time, and controlled atthe point of maintenance. This meansthat task cards can be electronicallysigned off, removing the need for anypaper records. Historically airlines andMRO facilities have relied upon dirtyngerprint copies of job cards as themaster for technical records, and teams of data-entry clerks transcribinghandwritten, and often illegible, technicaldata into the central computer system.This can introduce a two-to-four-daytime lag in actually getting the data intothe computer. This can severely limit theairlines ability to check that part installshave had no negative impact onairworthiness, and can also hamper

efforts to control the short-term planningof maintenance tasks.The results of introducing a paperless,

all-electronic environment in maintenancecan be dramatic. The rst obvious impact

is a decluttered, more organised work-place.

RAMCO is one of the rst MROsoftware vendors to have successfullyworked with the operator and theregulator, in this case the FAA, tointroduce the full paperless workingenvironment at Petroleum Helicopters(PHI) in the USA. PHI operates over 250helicopters and xed wing aircraft insupport of the oil industry, transportingoil workers on and off oil rigs.Introduced last year, the RAMCOapplication includes the facility toelectronically sign off maintenanceactions on-line. The system uses a chip-and-pin concept to authenticate the usersidentication. Data relating to partremovals and installations are veried atthe point of sign-off and lead to a morerapid identication of airworthinessissues. The database is then a true real-time reection of the actual technical andmaintenance status of each individual tailnumber. It also means that the mechanicsare the ones performing the data entryand PHI can improve the quality of datacapture, ensuring that the correct ATAChapter, fault codes and technical write-ups are entered into the system.

Future improvementsWhile there are many MRO software

packages around now that deal very wellwith the complexities of modern aircraftconguration management, they are onlyas good as the data they are fed with.One of the key challenges facing anairline when implementing a new MRO

technology is to get the baseconguration data. Setting up thereference data is necessarily a manualprocess, comments Beahm. We havevarious tools to assist the electronic

upload, but to date OEMs have not beenhelpful in making this Rule Repositoryprocess easy. We do not see this changingin the near future.

In terms of hope for the future, theanswer probably lies in OEMs adoptingfull Product Life-Cycle Management(PLM) technology to provide end-to-endelectronic conguration data. Ourexperience is that this type of approach isalready being adopted in the militaryMRO market, but it is slow to beadopted for the civil arena, commentsWallis. However, standards are beingdiscussed and becoming available for theairline market. SAP and others areinvesting in this type of technology, but itneeds to be adopted by the airplanemakers and made available in standardformats for the aftermarket systems touse.

SummaryThe importance of conguration

management and how modern MRO ITsystems handle and deal with itscomplexities and subtleties is largelyoverlooked. Many MRO ITimplementations fail to deliver promisedbenets, and going live is delayedsignicantly, because choices of strategyto model congurations are either rushed,or are made on poor advice. Theconsequences of poor choices will live inthe system for a long time and can behard to reverse. That said, the benets of getting conguration management rightin a new MRO IT system can besignicant, as shown by SASs estimate

that it will save several million dollars peryear saving in engineering overhead costs.The new era of truly paperlessmaintenance environments for airlines isbecoming a reality.


ISSUE NO. 39 FEBRUARY/M ARCH2005 A IRCRAFTCOMMERCE

MRO softwares MAXIMO is based in the systemit acquired from Raptor Inc in 2004. This is based on three pillars, the first of which is the rulesrepository which holds the rules about allowable fits. The second is a component life accounting functionality, and the third is the compliance functionality.

IT strategies for aircraft configuration management

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