Next Generation Aircraft Depot Maintenance Management Technologies

Aircraft maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) organizations face the challenging task of scheduling maintenance work without knowing the full extent of the work content at the time of initial inspection. During the overhaul, new work is discovered requiring rapid re-sequencing of tasks and the need for additional resources. Current scheduling systems are designed to schedule jobs with known work content and bill of materials, making them unsuitable for the MRO environment. Comanche Engineering Solutions proposes a predictive, real-time sense-and-respond scheduling system that will take both the known portion of the work and a "forecast" of the unknown portion that may be discovered during the repair cycle in developing schedules and work item sequences. During Phase I, a web-based working prototype will be developed. The prototype will demonstrate on-floor real-time work content information gathering capability, "forecasting" capability for the unknown portion of the work content, a constraint-based scheduling approach and a sense-and-respond rescheduling capability as the known work content information changes. The prototype system will be validated by testing in the depot environment, and by review of the potential users and depot personnel.