AviTrader_Monthly_MRO_e-Magazine_2017-06

Lufthansa Consulting
37
Dissecting
predictive maintenance
Airlines utilising predictive analysis report a significant decrease in maintenance costs.
Photo: Lufthansa Technik
Panagiotis Poligenis, Associate Partner, at Lufthansa Consulting looks at how this process is enabling
increased aircraft reliability and reducing airlines’ operating costs.
It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent,
but the ones most responsive to change. This essential message of
On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, is a
statement that airlines and MRO providers ought to incorporate in
their strategy. In times of advanced digitalisation technologies and big
data, most of those organizations still adopt either a preventive or a
reactive approach to maintenance events. Those who deliberately opt
for predictive maintenance based on the technical data of their fleets
are tomorrow’s winners.
The two main schemes in place today have shown their limitations:
while the reactive approach involves replacing a component only after
it has failed, thus incurring associated costs and often AOG (Aircraft
On Ground) time, the preventive approach stipulates that life-limited
parts must be replaced at established intervals, which might be too
soon or at times too late. The costs associated with those two schemes
can consume up to 20% of an airline’s operating costs.
The predictive maintenance approach combines CBM (Condition-
Based Monitoring) and data driven prognostics. By comparing data
and trends collected in real-time with historical data and definitions of
optimal measurements, the predictive models identify anomalies and
the root causes of failures.
The decisive advantages of predictive maintenance
• Airlines utilising predictive analysis report a significant decrease of
their maintenance costs. In fact, the early effective warnings issued by
the system monitoring the health of their fleet in real time, together
with the data prognostics, enable them to replace the defective parts
or system and take maintenance action only when the life cycle of
the unit has been reached or when system deterioration is the root
cause. Proper alignment of resources is a useful outcome for MRO.
The airline’s priority is to lower the missed alarm rate in order to react
effectively at a given time.
• Predictive maintenance strategy for MRO departments aims to identify
the real drivers of performance amongst a tremendous amount
of data and internal KPIs, which prevent ad-hoc maintenance action.
These indicators are used to initiate optimal maintenance schedules,
updated in real-time, which allow
maintenance resources to fix defects
more efficently while increasing aircraft
utilisation.
• Predictive solutions based on CBM
and data-driven prognostics enable
inventory managers to create models
that score inventory levels for each
component, thus allowing them to
identify repairable or consumable
parts that are likely to be out of stock.
This improves availability of the rotable
and expendable inventory, and
reduces inventory costs.
Panagiotis Poligenis, Associate Partner
at Lufthansa Consulting
AviTrader MRO - June 2017