Data in Aircraft Maintenance – What can we do with it?
Data is seen as the new currency. It can be used to make more informed decisions, optimize operations, and reduce costs to increase revenue or profits altogether! Many of the airlines we are talking to do not exactly know what they can do with the data and achieve with it. Data collected during aircraft maintenance can be used for various purposes beyond just regulatory compliance and proactive maintenance.
Examples of how data can be leveraged in aircraft maintenance:
Predictive Maintenance: By analyzing historical data and identifying patterns, aircraft operators can use predictive analytics to forecast equipment failures and schedule maintenance activities before they become critical. This helps to minimize the impact of maintenance activities on flight schedules and reduces the likelihood of unscheduled maintenance.
Component Life Monitoring: By tracking the usage and performance of individual aircraft components, operators can monitor their condition and predict when they will require maintenance or replacement. This helps minimize the maintenance cost and improves the efficiency of the maintenance process.
Maintenance Planning: Data collected during aircraft maintenance can be used to develop and update maintenance plans. This information can help to identify areas where maintenance activities can be optimized and reduce the overall cost of maintenance.
Supply Chain Management: By tracking the usage and performance of individual aircraft components, operators can optimize their supply chain and reduce the cost of component procurement. This includes identifying opportunities for component repair or overhaul instead of replacement and reducing inventory levels.
Performance Monitoring: Data collected during aircraft maintenance can be used to monitor the performance of aircraft systems and components. This information can be used to identify areas where performance can be improved and develop strategies to optimize the performance of aircraft.
Root Cause Analysis: By analyzing data from various sources, such as maintenance records, flight data, and sensor data, operators can identify the root cause of equipment failures and develop strategies to prevent future failures.
Compliance Management: By tracking and storing maintenance data, operators can ensure that they are in compliance with regulatory requirements and avoid costly penalties.
Warranty Management: By tracking maintenance activities and the usage of components, operators can optimize their warranty claims process and reduce the cost of warranty repairs.
Flight Operations Monitoring: Data collected during aircraft maintenance can be used to monitor the performance of flight operations, such as fuel consumption, flight times, and flight routes. This information can be used to identify areas where operational efficiency can be improved and reduce the cost of flight operations.
Safety Management: By tracking and analyzing maintenance data, operators can identify potential safety hazards and develop strategies to mitigate these hazards. This helps to ensure the safety of passengers, crew, and ground personnel.
As you can see, data collected during aircraft maintenance is a valuable resource that can be used in a wide range of applications. By leveraging this data, airlines can improve their operations' efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and safety.
The importance of data quality
Data quality is of utmost importance for all the examples mentioned above. The accuracy and reliability of the data directly affect the validity of the conclusions drawn from it, and thus the effectiveness of the maintenance activities. Poor data quality can result in incorrect predictions, incorrect maintenance plans, ineffective root cause analysis, non-compliance with regulations, inefficient warranty management, and decreased safety.
Probably you are familiar with the term garbage in garbage out – you cannot drive value from data and make the right decisions on flawed data. Having your data organized, cleansed, labeled, identifying, and filling the gaps is needed to drive value from data, your digitization strategy, and airworthiness compliance.
For example, if the data used for predictive maintenance is incorrect or unreliable, the maintenance activities scheduled based on that data may be ineffective or even harmful to the aircraft. Similarly, if the data used for root cause analysis is of poor quality, the root cause of the problem may not be accurately identified, leading to inefficient and ineffective solutions.
Ensuring the quality of the data collected during aircraft maintenance is critical for the success of any data-driven maintenance activities. Operators must implement rigorous processes for data collection, validation, and analysis to ensure that the data used is accurate, complete, and reliable. This will help to improve the efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and safety of the maintenance activities, and provide better service to customers.
How can we ensure data quality?
Here are some steps that an operator can take to ensure the quality of data collected during aircraft maintenance:
Establish Data Collection Processes: Establish clear processes for collecting, storing, and updating data from various sources, such as maintenance records, flight data, and sensor data. This will help to ensure that the data is collected consistently and accurately.
Validate Data Accuracy: Implement processes to validate the accuracy of the data collected, such as cross-checking data against other sources, reviewing data for consistency and outliers, and performing spot-checks. This will help to ensure that the data is accurate and reliable.
Use Standardized Data Formats: Implement standardized data formats and definitions to ensure that data collected from different sources can be easily integrated and compared. This will help to minimize errors and improve the accuracy of the data.
Implement Data Security Measures: Implement robust security measures to protect the data collected during aircraft maintenance. This includes encrypting sensitive data, controlling access to data, and regularly backing up data to prevent loss due to hardware failures or other issues.
Regular Data Maintenance: Regularly maintain and update the data collected, including removing duplicates, correcting errors, and updating information. This will help to ensure that the data remains accurate and up-to-date.
Monitor Data Quality: Implement processes to monitor the quality of the data collected, including tracking the number of errors and outliers, and reviewing data regularly to identify areas for improvement. This will help to identify and resolve data quality issues in a timely manner.
Automat data quality checks
With specialized data management tools, it is possible to perform various data quality checks, including checking data for consistency, accuracy, completeness, and conformity to specified standards. Data quality tools can automatically flag data that is missing or contains incorrect values, duplicate records, or outliers. They can also be configured to check data against predefined business rules, such as ensuring that dates are in the correct format, or that values fall within specified ranges.
In addition, data quality tools can also perform data profiling, which involves analyzing the data to understand its structure, content, and relationships. This helps to identify potential data quality issues and inform the design of data quality checks. By automating data quality checks, operators can reduce the time and effort required to manually validate data and improve the accuracy and reliability of the data used for aircraft maintenance. This will help to ensure that maintenance activities are efficient, cost-effective, and safe.
Automating data quality checks is an effective way for operators to ensure the quality of the data. By using specialized software tools, operators can reduce the effort required to validate data, and improve the accuracy and reliability of the data used for maintenance activities.
Example Data management Tool
With NEXUS you can manage all your data in aircraft airworthiness critical processes. It is a software solution in conjunction with your MRO/M&E system landscape to manage, collect and exchange data, whilst retaining confidence in data quality and accuracy.
What can NEXUS do for you:
Prepare and ingest aircraft data to have it all in one place and in the right format
Conduct automated aircraft phase-ins
Have full data validation and airworthiness consistency checks
Have a backfill with OEM data
Ensure industry and your operator standards are enforced across the whole dataset
Be able to have continuous Data Health Checks
Use self-service reports such as maintenance due forecast
Have interfaces for automatic data exchange
Use Robotic Process Automation for automatic data uploads and checks
