Towards MRO 4.0: Challenges for Digitalization and Mapping Emerging Technologies

Abstract

<div class="section abstract"><div class="htmlview paragraph">With technological breakthroughs in electric land vehicles revolutionizing their respective industry, maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) facilities in aviation are also adopting digital technologies in their practices. But despite this drive towards digitalization, the industry is still dominated by manual labor and subjective assessments. Today, several technologies, processes, and practices are being championed to resolve some of these outstanding challenges. Considering this, it is important to present current perspectives regarding where the technology stands today and how we can evaluate capabilities for autonomous decision support systems that prescribe maintenance activities. Overlooking some of these unsettled domain issues can potentially undermine any benefits in speed, process, and resilience promised by such systems.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph"><b>Towards MRO 4.0: Challenges for Digitalization and Mapping Emerging Technologies</b> provides some understanding of specific motivating factors by focusing on the digitalization challenges for MRO 4.0 and the role of building “trust” in technology by reimagining stakeholder experiences. It examines overarching issues, such as data management, robotics, optimization, artificial intelligence, and systems engineering.</div><div class="htmlview paragraph"><a href="https://www.sae.org/publications/edge-research-reports" target="_blank">Click here to access the full SAE EDGE</a><sup>TM</sup><a href="https://www.sae.org/publications/edge-research-reports" target="_blank"> Research Report portfolio.</a></div></div>

Transforming the Skies: Managing Remote Workforce at a Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) Aviation Company

“…One of the major challenges was receiving the information on time to meet several deadlines, which caused minor delays when the PMO team members were adjusting to their newly founded remote work status. The onsite workers have now started to rely on sending the information by email, uploading it to a secure server, using screen share, and/or video conference meetings to pass along the information [15][16][17]. They had to quickly adjust on how and where to send the information because, in comparison to the pre-COVID-19 era, the PMO support workers would usually go to the operational site, manufacturing, or production floor to retrieve the information by a handoff paper copy from the MRO worker.…”

“…This involved extra steps that the MRO onsite worker had to complete. The DocuSign software was implemented later to speed up the process of signing documents [16,17].…”

“…However, it is crucial to emphasize that successful collaboration within a remote workforce hinges on well-defined anticipations, a program manager that adapts to the remote work environment, transparent communication, and a robust foundation of trust among the team members. The PM at Company A incorporated a trust-based management style in which PMO team members were able to manage their time and tasks effectively while still meeting all their goals, which helped keep their productivity at a high level because they were not being micromanaged [14,16,17].…”

“…The Changing Landscape of Workplace and Workforce information before the COVID-19 era, and the PM made the PMO remote workforce aware of this function and to use it. These email and document tags had a banner that stated: Sensitive, Internal Use Only, and/or Proprietary Information [14,17].…”

“…This conclusion is grounded in IT tasks, such as software development and troubleshooting, which are inherently conducive to remote execution. Moreover, remote IT personnel enjoy equitable access to tools and resources, fostering seamless collaboration [14,17]. Conversely, a different perspective emerges for the maintenance department, indicating a more favorable alignment with an onsite workforce model.…”