Purpose-Aircraft operators incur significant costs when an aircraft is taken out of service for maintenance. This paper presents a method for reducing time duration of aircraft maintenance checks using critical chain project management (CCPM) principle. Design/methodology/approach-A case study of a typical heavy maintenance check performed on an Airbus 320 aircraft is undertaken for the analysis. The critical chain method is applied to develop a plan with a reduced duration and a survey and field observations to validate the findings have also been carried out as a part of this study. Findings-The paper compares the traditional project management method with CCPM in view of reducing the aircraft down time duration for maintenance. This study repositions buffers and other techniques to shorten the chain path and a reduction in the total duration of the project by 5 days is achieved. Research limitations/implications-It is argued that application of CCPM principle can reduce the duration of an aircraft maintenance check, but this study is done in a single project situation focusing on project planning and execution. Therefore, additional study may be required to examine other issues. Originality/value-Cost of the maintenance is second highest expenditure factor for an airline operator. Therefore, it is necessary to drive the maintenance cost down. The paper demonstrates that the duration of a maintenance check can be reduced by 8.9% using the method suggested in this study.
Abstract-Passive Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has revolutionized the way in which products are identified. This paper considers the effect of metals on the performance of RFID at ultra high frequency (UHF).The paper establishes read patterns in space, highlighting the interference of RF waves due to three different metals, one ferrous and the other two non ferrous, when placed behind a transponder. The effect of thickness of the metal plate is also examined. Different metals have been found to have different interference effects although there are some similarities in their read patterns related to their material properties. Also experiments have been carried out to identify and establish various methods of improving this performance.Finally, differences between performance-measuring parameters, namely attenuating transmitted power and calculating read rate at a fixed attenuation are established and possible reasons of these observations are presented.
Aircraft on ground or down-time for its maintenance is a clear loss in revenue for an airline operation. With never ending competition and growing operating costs of aircraft, airlines continuously need to explore opportunities to reduce the aircraft down-time in order to remain sustainable. Due to round the clock operation feature of scheduled airlines, aircraft maintenance operations are generally carried out using traditional management methodologies instead of considering it as a project. Though aircraft heavy maintenance checks consist of several major tasks that can last from few weeks to a year, the maintenance organisations do not adopt modern project management methodologies. Therefore, this paper models a heavy maintenance check of an Airbus aircraft as a typical project and adopts contemporary project management methodology to explore the possibility of reducing the downtime. To this end, a case study has been done at an aircraft maintenance company to analyse the potential of this project management method in aircraft maintenance industry.
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