The Uptime blog

A few weeks ago I wrote about the importance of helping mechanics to fix rare problems faster—accelerating the repair of systems that don’t fail very often. Today’s post follows up on that theme as it relates to the aviation MRO industry. Because aircraft systems are generally quite reliable, when something fails unexpectedly it is called a non-routine event (NR). (It should be noted that aircraft systems have multiple redundancies, so an NR is not necessarily a cause for concern. But it still needs to be fixed.)

Non-routine events are a major source of unscheduled aircraft maintenance. (Other industries may refer to this as a break-fix event because something failed outside the normal maintenance schedule.) The question therefore is, “What to do about NRs?” The idea of planning for unscheduled maintenance seems like an oxymoron. After all, how can you plan for something that you can’t predict? And that is really the point; on any complex machine—and an aircraft is really complex—you know something is going to break, you just don’t know what it will be.

To explain the difficulty of the problem let’s look at some real customer data.  In a fleet of wide body, long-haul aircraft over a two-year period, an airline found that there were over 3,000 non-routine events that could be traced back to almost 300 different systems. 10 systems caused almost half of the NRs. (In fact, 1 system alone caused 20% of the NRs.) But the majority of the NRs (51%) were caused by failures in one of the other 270+ systems.

When this data is plotted on a graph (above) it is easy to see the trend. The top 10 causes of NRs occured much more frequently than the rest of the systems. (The number 1 cause needs unscheduled maintenance almost once a day and number 10 occurs at least every other week.) The rest of the systems in this study (97%) occurred an average of 4 times per year, forming a long tail on our statistical data. However, since the top 10 problems account for less than half of all non-routine events, if an airline wishes to reduce the overall impact of NRs, then it must address the long tail.

Several conclusions can be drawn from these numbers:
• Most of the systems on an aircraft are quite reliable. (Given the complexity of an airplane and the physical stresses it endures, this is a great testament to the aircraft manufacturers.)
• Mechanics can quickly gain experience fixing the top 10 causes of NRs.
• Mechanics do not gain significant experience fixing the other half of the NRs. (They just don’t see them often enough.)

A typical maintenance approach is to focus attention on the most frequent failures—the top 10. Training to fix the top 10 is pretty straight forward however, the long tail consists of many different problems that happen infrequently. (These are individual systems that rarely break but, when added together, account for the majority of the unscheduled maintenance.) The only way to deal with such a wide-ranging set of problems is to improve the mechanic’s ability to respond to the unknown. Better training is not the solution, automating information systems is.

It should be obvious but when time is tight and a repair is urgent it’s best to bring service information to the mechanic, rather than the other way around. This can be accomplished by integrating maintenance information systems with maintenance planning, inventory and other back-office systems to provide a fully integrated scheduling and execution environment. Then, no matter what type of problem the technician uncovers they can quickly obtain the information they need and begin the process of repair.

Along with our partner Oracle, I’ll be co-presenting an Air Transport World magazine webinar on this topic in a few weeks (December 9, to be specific); if you’d like to attend that webinar, sign up here.

The October 2008 issue of Air Transport World includes an article titled “Mechanics Wanted,” regarding the challenges of recruiting enough aviation service technicians to meet the future needs of the aviation industry. 

According to the article, the demand for aircraft maintenance technicians is expected to more than double in the next two decades, to support fleet growth and replace retiring technicians. This echoes what we’ve referenced in a previous blogs about the graying of the workforce and the need to accelerate the education of new service technicians.

Why can’t the industry recruit the number of technicians they need? First of all, it takes a long time to complete maintenance training, typically five years to be licensed to sign-off on repairs. Second, service technician jobs often don’t pay as well as other professions (both inside and out of the aviation industry). The opportunity to work on aircraft is just not appealing to enough people. 

To make matters worse, once recruits are in place it has become harder to train them because there aren’t enough planes on the ground to provide the hands-on experience they need. (This is a good thing for travelers but makes training a challenge.)

“It’s getting more and more difficult to get access to a real maintenance environment for training purposes because the planes are always in use, the maintenance schedule is getting tighter and tighter, ground time is getting shorter and shorter.” —Klaus Schmidt-Klyk, Director of Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service, Lufthansa Technical Training.

Since Enigma is in the business of reducing maintenance delays, we are happy to hear that aircraft uptime is increasing, and customers tell us that our aircraft maintenance solutions are part of that improvement. But we sympathize with the MRO shops and airline operators that are trying to train technicians and believe that technology plays a strong role in achieving further improvements.

I just returned from the 2008 ATA E-Business/ S1000D Forum in Budapest, Hungary. This was the first year that ATA (Air Transport Association) combined the E-Business and S1000D meetings. The resulting event concentrated more on authoring/tech pubs than on the aftermarket service and support focus of past years. Almost 300 people attended, which is larger than either of the two individual events in 2007 but smaller than the combined total from last year. It wasn’t clear to me if this drop-off was because of the location, the topics, or the economy.

This year’s event drew fewer airlines than last year (14) but those that attended were serious about improving maintenance processes and job cards. There were also many OEMs in attendance trying to learn how to implement the S1000D spec but a few wanted to learn how to improve customer support and field service through electronic catalogs. Enigma stood out as one of the only exhibitors solely focused on making service information usable to mechanics and technicians, and a number of airlines sought us out for a demo. Each one expressed an urgent need to reduce maintenance costs. So while the quantity of attendees was down, the quality seemed to be up.

One change from last year was an increase in the amount of competitive eavesdropping. I often noticed Boeing and Airbus people hovering around as I gave product demos. This was particularly amusing from Airbus because when they presented the A380 information system during one of the open sessions it looked a lot like the Enigma solution from 2002. However, during the presentation Airbus mentioned some problems around incremental updates so I guess they haven’t copied everything.

Regarding the event itself, ATA did a fantastic job planning and coordinating the location and the topics. The hotel was first-rate and the city was very pleasant, despite the fact that the Communists were marching to commemorate the failed 1956 Revolt and protesting all things democratic. (Perhaps that’s why my bag arrived home two days after I did.) For me, the whole event was a worthwhile adventure. I learned a few things that could improve our products, and I was able to meet potential customers and partners to discuss the business opportunities in the aviation aftermarket. Kudos to Brad Ballance and the ATA!

It’s a no-brainer that parts managers and service technicians need fast, easy access to the right parts and service information, all in a “one-stop-shop” application. In this mini-demo, I give you an overview of the multiple ways that one can search for parts and service information in the InService Electronic Parts Catalog (EPC).

When data is loaded into the EPC application, all of the content is indexed for fast and easy retrieval by the search system.  Click on the demo to see the following features:

Search All:  The Search All option looks for the desired text within all available sources of information: parts catalogs, maintenance manuals, product specs, sales collateral and any other information that has been included in the solution. This search option allows the use of conditional (Boolean) expressions such as “AND”, “OR” and ”NOT”.

Search Part:  The Search Part option looks for the desired text as a part number inside the illustrated parts catalog. This search option also allows the use of wildcard and truncation operators in the search field.

Search Center:  The Search Center provides the ability to perform more refined searches. This option allows unique search parameters for parts catalogs and product information, broken down by product type, family and model as well as part number, description and free text.

Search Results:  The Search Results display a list of links to information that matches the search criteria. The user can sort the search results by a particular column or filter the search results by applying a specific product model.

 

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A few years ago I met with a customer service executive (Bill) from a well-known office equipment manufacturer. Over the course of several months we had a really good discussion regarding the best ways to improve field service. During this time Bill shared the service statistics for one of his products, which reflected the data I’ve seen in many other industries. What surprised me was the way he interpreted these statistics. Here’s what he found:

1. Over an 8-month period, one product line received 5591 service calls
2. Those calls were the result of 423 different fault codes
3. The top 20 fault codes accounted for 50% of all service calls
4. The other 403 fault codes (95% of total) were responsible for the rest of the service calls
5. Each of those 403 fault codes occurred no more than 51 times. (In fact, 364 fault codes—86%—were tripped 20 times or less.)

Bill told me his company was trying to improve service by focusing on the most common problems—the top 20 fault codes—but he thought this was the wrong approach. He believed the top 20 problems didn’t pose an issue for most technicians because they repaired them so often. It was the other 50% of the calls that made life difficult.

The key to understanding Bill’s perspective can be found in the last two bullets—half of the service calls involved fault codes that occur less than 1% of the time. (In fact, 140 service calls involved fault codes that only occurred once.) Therefore, field technicians got little or no experience repairing these rare problems. Further analysis showed these service calls often took more than two hours to resolve and were at the heart of scheduling delays and blown response times.

Bill felt that the real key to improving customer service was not faster repairs for well-known problems but a more consistent approach to all problems. He said that once he changed his focus from 20 fault codes to 423, he realized the answer was not to streamline call handling, travel, part lookup or closeout but rather it was improving information access in general. If his service teams had an integrated parts and service information system they could address any fault code efficiently and consistently.

Recently, Bill told me his company never did act on his advice and he subsequently left the firm. He realized that a slick new call-center gets more political traction than a system to support field service engineers. After all, a tour of the call center was a great selling tool during customer visits. Unfortunately, at the end of the day it’s those same customers that suffer the results of this decision.

The September 19 issue of AftermarketNews reported, “A hot debate has ensued as to whether the industry ever can, or should, get rid of paper cats. The results of NCMA’s recent survey of counter professionals shows usage of paper versus electronic remains nearly tied, with paper catalogs at 86 percent and e-cats at 84 percent.” That research came from the National Catalog Managers Association (NCMA), which is a professional society within the Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association (AAIA). The data showed that 86 percent of parts counter professionals use manufacturers’ paper catalogs, 84 percent use full-line electronic catalogs, 70 percent use manufacturers’ web catalogs and 32 percent use manufacturers’ CDs.

The following week, September 26, the e-zine  did a follow-up report, which asked parts professionals where they turn initially to look up parts information.  Not surprisingly, it turns out that parts pros go to an electronic parts catalog a whopping 90% of the time; they resort to flipping through the pages of a paper OEM catalog only if they can’t find what they need in the electronic parts catalog. This makes sense, since the world has grown accustomed to searching for information online.

We at Enigma see a growing demand for our electronic parts catalog software, not only because it makes life easier for parts managers, but because it makes it easier for manufacturers to create, distribute and update parts and service information to their dealer networks and distributors.

Scott Luckett, vice president, technology standards and solutions for the AAIA, had this to say:  “When parts professionals first turn to the electronic source 90 percent of the time, shouldn’t parts manufacturers allocate 90 percent of their cataloging resources into this medium? If electronic catalog content got 90 percent of the attention and resources, it wouldn’t be long before paper catalogs were truly obsolete.”

Thanks Scott, for that ringing endorsement of electronic part catalogs!  We agree that when it comes to part catalogs, electronic is the way to go if possible. But we also realize that not every part manager, service technician or dealer has reliable internet access, so the Enigma software makes it possible to distribute parts catalogs via DVD or paper. Furthermore, when technical information needs to be printed out the electronic catalog will automatically provide it in a consistent and usable format. Maybe “paper cats“ (gee, I like that phrase!) will go on the endangered species list in the next few years. In this case it won’t be a bad thing, but for the time being it is important to offer our customers multiple options and maximum flexibility.

An article in the August issue of Airline Procurement Magazine discusses the challenges of responding to aircraft-on-ground (AOG) events. An AOG is described as any equipment-related event that prevents an aircraft from being dispatched. (This means that bad weather doesn’t count as an AOG.) The article points out that an AOG event results in lost revenue, higher maintenance costs and decreased passenger commitment. Because the impact of an AOG is so great, finding ways to minimize the impact is critical.

If you think the previous paragraph merely states the obvious, I agree. The article fails to discuss any of the means used by airlines to minimize the impact of AOGs. That’s a shame because there is a lot of software out there that can address various aspects of the AOG problem. Whether it is troubleshooting/fault isolation, parts identification, scheduling service, or inventory management, there are many pieces of technology that can help solve this puzzle.

Those of you not in the aviation industry may be wondering if this matters to you. It does. Every industry has some version of an AOG. Whether the crane stops hoisting, the excavator stops digging, the combine stops harvesting or the top drive stops turning, when production comes to a standstill companies will spend whatever it takes to get up-and-running again.

It may never be possible to eliminate AOGs. Sooner or later everything breaks, sometimes without warning. Smart companies however, find ways to guard against such risks and to reduce the cost of emergency maintenance and repairs. Maintenance software that can be fully integrated with other enterprise systems ensures that accurate information flows seamlessly, which is the key ingredient for good maintenance decisions and rapid response.

This Airline Procurement article highlighted several aspects of a serious problem—a problem that affects every industry. Now it’s time to start discussing solutions.

OEMs want to sell more parts to their dealer networks, and the dealers want a simple way to order parts; therefore, it’s not surprising that the shopping cart features of Enigma InService Electronic Parts Catalog are highly valued by our customers because they help dealerships order OEM parts easily. The following podcast demonstrates how shopping carts contain information such as part number and description, price, quantity, and notes/comments, as well as dealership information (such as the dealership’s unique logo and billing/shipping addresses.)

Enigma InService EPC customers usually integrate their shopping carts with a back-office e-commerce system, which facilitates parts order tracking and fulfillment. The carts can be viewed online, emailed to someone, or printed out as a PDF file.  The shopping list displays those parts being ordered by the user and is associated with a specific shopping cart. The shopping list can be updated by removing parts, changing quantities, or adding additional cataloged or non-cataloged parts.

Keep in mind that the shopping cart functionality allows specific customer information and parts requisition activities to be standardized. Each shopping cart includes information specific to each customer and/or type of order. Multiple shopping carts can be defined and re-used to accelerate the creation and submission of parts orders.

Take a peek at the product podcast and let us know what you think. If you want to see more, I’d be happy to set up a thorough web demo for you.

 

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Recently, I was drawn into a debate regarding the future of offline applications. (For my purpose, an offline application is one that continues to operate properly even when disconnected from the network.) The person I was debating took the position that offline applications will vanish within two years as Web-based and SaaS applications grow in popularity. Furthermore, they contended that current/real-time data is the only data of any real import to business. As a result, this person claimed that offline capabilities for software applications were truly unnecessary. I disagree and firmly believe that offline applications will actually flourish in the future. Using the maintenance environment as a background, I will explain why:

1. Connectivity is not pervasive. No matter how much the wireless and cable companies want us to believe that the world will be fully-connected in the not-too-distant future, a large portion of the world will remain disconnected. Whether the connection is wireless or wired, access to the network is dependent on the number of customers that will pay for it. (Anyone that has driven through a rural/remote area can tell you how unreliable the cell-phone connection can be.) Furthermore, when it comes to fixing equipment, mechanics must often work in poor conditions where network cables are unavailable and wireless is slow and/or nonexistent. (Think about weather-related outages; isn’t it funny how often networks fail at the worst time possible?) Failover is critical to customer support and so having a disconnected-mode is key to delivering services in the real world.

2. Offline processing, online storage. In all things, performance is critical and offline processing leverages the power of the workstation, providing faster results. (This is especially true when problems and solutions are unclear, requiring multiple iterations to properly identify and resolve.) Once complete, results can be uploaded/synchronized to online repositories for use by other users.

3. Backup and archiving. In any regulated industry, companies often choose to save older versions of maintenance information, which provides a snapshot to a point in time. In the case of a recall or investigation, the ability to restore or view maintenance history is invaluable.

4. Intellectual property. Offline applications allow local storage of proprietary information that must always be at hand. This is critical for collecting maintenance notes and best-practices, where user-generated content can only be understood within the context of the specific equipment configuration and service procedures that were being performed. This is also important for field engineers that service multiple clients and must guard proprietary data from exposure.

5. Connectivity costs. Unless information changes daily (hourly?) it doesn’t make sense to make online access exclusive. Given the volume of data required to service complex equipment, local/offline applications make perfect sense.
 
Enigma is not the only company to recognize the importance of offline applications. I see a trend of classic web applications developing frameworks that enable them to work in offline mode and combine desktop and internet functionality: 

1. Google Gears
2. Adobe Air
3. Ebay (Perhaps the biggest web application ever, Ebay developed a desktop/offline application for power users.)
4. Wikipedia offers DVD and offline downloading.

The issue can be further highlighted using this simple metaphor; in a world that has reliable public transportation systems, people still use cars. A sense of security and predictability are what influence companies to retain control over maintenance data through the use of offline applications. The pendulum has shifted many times from the days of mainframe computing to desktop applications, to client (fat) and server applications, and back to the web and back again. Offline and online applications have survived the test of time, each for different reasons. It appears there will always be room for both.

Manufacturing Business Technology recently announced its MBT 2008 Innovation Insight Awards, and among them was an Honorable Mention for Advanced Technology Services (ATS), a company that provides maintenance and repair services for manufacturing plants.

ATS received the kudos because they deployed Knowledgebase—their own proprietary database of processes, procedures and best practices for their field service technicians. What is interesting is that much of the content in this custom application came from the technicians themselves. Knowledgebase helps ATS to fix equipment faster, thereby reducing their customers’ downtime.

Here at Enigma we agree wholeheartedly with capturing and reusing technical expertise, which is why our products such as InService MRO, InService EPC and the Enigma 3C Platform all include a feature called eNotes. (For a mini product demo of this feature, see our August 15 podcast post.) 

While service manuals may contain some previously established best practices or proprietary techniques, eNotes allow mechanics to insert new comments connected to the original content. This lets companies capture feedback on-the-fly and also gives context to the comments because they are linked to the specific task that was being performed. eNotes are also available to other users (based on authorization/distribution rules). This makes it easy for other mechanics to learn from their peers and for OEMs to update documentation so that it reflects real world experience.

But it’s not just eNotes that make Enigma products useful; our products aggregate and deliver all product content in one place, in ways that streamline the entire maintenance execution process. The ability for service technicians to use a single application to pull relevant OEM information, whether parts information or service manuals, from multiple sources, is a tremendous advantage in the field or the service depot. The description of ATS’ Knowledgebase is impressive, but it sounds like an expensive solution. What is more impressive is that, today, any company can provide similar capabilities using Enigma’s out-of-the-box solutions.