MRO Overhauled: The future of aircraft maintenance and repair

The MRO of the future will increasingly be a proactive part of the aircraft lifecycle, alerting aircraft owners of a need for equipment replacement or refurbishment before systems break down. Today the industry depends on detailed — and often manual, paper-based — record keeping to track maintenance history. Transitioning that paperwork into the digital world is a good start.

But that is just the first step, an enablement move that opens the MRO processes to digitalisation. Shifting processes to reduce aircraft on ground time while a plane is in for service is a key factor in the modernisation efforts. After all, planes don’t make money sitting in the hangar.

The industry also faces challenges in staffing. While an impending pilot shortage gets more of the media coverage, a growing commercial fleet also demands a rise in maintenance technicians to support those aircraft, even in the context of the intervals between required maintenance checks increasing. Reducing the time required to maintain, repair and overhaul each aircraft is necessary to avoid massive investment.

…we are living in a digital world

Tying all of this together comes down to a focused push into digital, even while maintaining the human element that delivers spectacularly safe operations today. For MROs, it’s about collecting and analysing vast amounts of data from the aircraft — and, more importantly, they must respond to the clues contained in that data to keep airplanes out of the hangar and in the skies.

Beyond the buzzwords, big data is an undeniable part of the future of MRO

Depending on who you listen to, the concept of big data is either the future of nearly every industry or overused marketing hype. The reality, in aviation as elsewhere, is somewhere in between.

At the simplest level, big data means the process of taking ever larger collections of information and parsing them in different ways to identify trends and patterns.

Humans will still be needed: a maintenance technician might have a hunch about how parts are wearing or how a new procedure could improve the inspection process, for sure, and skill will still be required. But — back to the buzzwords — algorithmic analysis, machine learning and all sorts of other predictive computing whizz-bangery mean that the computers can start picking up hunches of their own.

Translating that to provable results, cross-checked against a global network of aircraft operations, is where it moves to the big data world. The MRO world is keen to explore the efficiencies that data can deliver, improving throughput and reducing costs, all while maintaining compliance with strict safety guidelines. That, at least, is the theory, and it’s one that most of the industry’s largest and most influential players are already working with.

Computing systems are more powerful and more efficient than ever. The ability to collect details about nearly every aspect of an airplane’s operations means massive repositories of data and a huge opportunity to mine that data for insights on how to optimise maintenance cycles. Sensors are everywhere in modern aircraft, and will continue to be installed from nose to tail to engines to wingtips.

This amount of data presents a compelling case if it can better predict failure points and help operators replace a component before failure, rather than after. Failure-based or reactive maintenance remains necessary, but it is the least appealing option since it usually means significant costs while the aircraft is grounded awaiting a fix.

Age-based preventative maintenance is a common approach seen today, either with life-limited parts that present regulatory requirements around such swaps or just common practice established by airlines. It is a less expensive approach in that the aircraft is not grounded unexpectedly.

But it also means taking some parts out of service before they truly are end of life. There is money to be saved by avoiding that premature retirement. A just-in-time replacement scheme built on more and better data aims to deliver those savings. It should help identify parts on the cusp of failure, regardless of how long they’ve been flying: over X hundred aircraft, component Y showed behaviour Z, N hundred hours before it failed.

Aircraft engines are the largest generators of data today and a major focus for big data preventative maintenance programs. A turbine running hotter than normal or slightly off balance might be an indication of an impending blade failure or other problems. A shift in fuel efficiency might indicate a need for an earlier than scheduled trip to the engine wash facility. Rolls-Royce has been at the cusp of this technology for quite some time now.

Ownership of all this data can be a contentious point across the industry. Airlines generally want to control any information about the performance of their aircraft, but the engine manufacturers can do a better job of detecting patterns against a broader, global installation base. And aircraft lessors will be quick to note that they own half the commercial aircraft in service today, giving them a reasonable claim on the data ownership.

Not surprisingly, the MROs would also appreciate access to the details to help plan future maintenance cycles, inventory stocks and other aspects of their operation. Everyone agrees that it is valuable, but who should control it and how much others should pay to access it remains much less clear. No wonder many large companies are vying to be the ones who get to be in charge.

Much like with drones, augmented reality systems are growing in use.

Answering the stewardship question will help address another major financial consideration for the industry: the cost of collecting and managing all this data.

If it is transmitted off the plane during flight that means significant satellite communications costs. Even if stored on board and transmitted on the ground, the costs add up over time. Storing, sorting, and searching for the patterns also come with costs.

Given the potential savings, the investment appears likely to pay off, but it’s nonetheless a big bet to make, and with so many competing models it seems like there will certainly be some disappointed faces in parts of the industry. How they respond to that disappointment — whether being a good loser or taking their ball of data and going home — will be crucial.

New tools and technology will make MRO faster, smarter and cheaper

Evolution of the MRO world is not just about putting sensors everywhere — the Internet of Things — and hoping the resulting data leads to improved operations. The development and adoption of new technologies for MRO operations could potentially deliver even greater benefits to the industry.

The maintenance and repair cycles for aircraft involve repetitive processes as the frame is inspected for signs of distress or fatigue. A manual inspection process can take a substantial amount of time as technicians move deliberately through a checklist, looking for tiny details on the frame exterior. Automating that process, or parts of it, could deliver a highly repeatable inspection process with improved reliability.

One approach to that work involves drones flying around an aircraft in the hangar rather than humans on scissor lifts or docking platforms. The time savings from using the drone is significant: a general visual inspection on a single-aisle jet can be completed in about an hour, compared to five to six hours of human time.

The digital data trail from the drones is also far more detailed. Video or still images of the entire inspection are maintained as part of the record, while more traditional inspections only document the broken bits. And the drone-based solutions can — or at least should — deliver identical inspection results every time, removing the variability of human judgement and human error.

human skills can still be augmented with technology

As one of the pioneers in the drone-based aircraft inspection space, French company Donecle recognises that there are some areas in which this technology is better suited to than others. As a result, its work started with a focus on external placards and markings. These are relatively easy to spot and validate, but even so the drone reduced the total time required by about 80 per cent. Similarly, the Donecle systems can quickly identify issues with a paint job, including highly accurate location details in the report.

These inspection programs are underway with the Air France-KLM Engineering & Maintenance division, including a 20-minute scan for stickers on an A320. More recently, Donecle expanded its offerings to cover aircraft inspections after a lightning strike.

Working with International Airline Group member carriers Iberia and Vueling under the auspices of the group’s Hangar 51 tech accelerator program, Donecle recently validated its lightning strike detection inspection process in real-world scenarios.

The process required less than two hours of time on the ground, slashing the typical duration by 80 per cent. The company will now pursue EASA certification of the process — a necessary step as it transitions from R&D to commercialisation of the technology.

Beyond automating processes, the future is about augmenting the reality of human MRO operators

Drones are promising for exterior inspections and more simple visual inspections, and inside the aircraft Rolls-Royce has been developing all sorts of tiny robots to climb up in its engines to do inspections. But in the near to medium term, more detailed work remains in the purview of human technicians, although those human skills can still be augmented with technology.

Augmented or Mixed Reality systems, or AR — where 3D schematics are displayed live on a pair of glasses, or over the camera view of a maintenance tablet, for example — are helping deliver reduced inspection times and more consistent digital data capture for MROs today, and this will only increase in the future.

Donning a pair of Atheer’s glasses and starting up an inspection procedure tasklist feels a bit futuristic. But it’s already spreading beyond the hangar: seatmaker JAMCO has a proof-of-concept with the Microsoft HoloLens consumer glasses technology that shows cabin crew how to disassemble seats to find lost mobile phones inflight, safely and without damaging the seats.

Fundamentally, the underlying concept of augmented reality is grounded in the simple reality of delivering well documented, reliable and repeatable results.

A voice-based assistant asks questions about the state of the aircraft and the technician answers, while the visual details are recorded for future reference. At the end of the inspection the results are in a digital maintenance log and ready for sign-off. The engineer never has to step away to check a clipboard, nor is there much chance that a step will accidentally be skipped, nor will pens be dropped into an engine or anything similar.

The video-supported AR solution also allows for remote guidance if needed. If an engineer discovers an anomaly in a traditional environment they may be forced to break away from the inspection to find a more senior team member to corroborate the finding. With a connected video system on their head, that support may be just a couple seconds away.

The AR solution allows the inspector to summon assistance from afar, possibly not even in the same MRO facility. The team can collaborate on the inspection and remediation far more quickly. And the senior/remote member of the team can then jump to another inspection somewhere else in the world, virtually, all without leaving their desk. Altran, now part of global services behemoth Capgemini, has demonstrated that it can map a factory in full virtual reality for training purposes, and the next step is to create that environment live.

Digitising the checklist offers other efficiency benefits as well. The inspection sequence can be varied for some engineers or planes in an A/B testing approach, where one group uses method A and another method B, and the results compared. This allows the MROs to optimise the sequence to reduce total time spent. It can also be used to vary the sequence to ensure engineers are always paying attention and not just going through the motions on autopilot.

The same AR systems can be extended beyond the inspection world to also guide aircraft modifications. Any area where the time on the ground can be reduced is a viable candidate for the technology, though the implementation costs must also be considered.

Much like with drones, augmented reality systems are growing in use, though it remains a slow go. The kit is expensive and more fragile than hardware that typically sits on a shop floor. It also requires significant up-front integration planning efforts and a back-end operation ready to accept the data produced. The upside is massive, but the transition is not an easy task.

The entire way that MRO and other changes to an aircraft are made and tracked is also in flux

Every modification made to an aircraft includes a long and detailed paper trail. The process and parts must be certified by regulators, typically in the form of a Supplemental Type Certificate (STC) and approved by the aircraft manufacturer. From there MROs are free to make the changes, so long as they can prove strict adherence to the procedures.

The documentation related to the work becomes critical to the certification of the aircraft, but tracking it among the various suppliers is far from an ideal process. The recently formed Independent Aircraft Modifier Alliance (IAMA) aims to address many of these challenges as it brings together some of the largest MRO groups in the world to cooperate on data exchange and aircraft history tracking.

IAMA’s goal is a centralised repository for all documentation related to modifications performed by its members. A single aircraft might have multiple changes made to it over the years with many MROs performing the work, and tracking those changes over time becomes an administrative headache. By providing a single interface through which an owner can query all the member MRO organisations for details about what changes have been made to an aircraft, compliance becomes significantly easier.

“STCs are a fast, cost efficient way to provide modifications,” notes Bernhard Randerath, vice president for design, engineering and innovation at Etihad Airways Engineering, a founding member of the IAMA alliance, explaining that “IAMA is a promising approach to address the critical points of documentation simplicity and continued after-sales support.”

One critical factor with IAMA’s approach is that the STCs themselves are not shared. The underlying technical details represent significant intellectual property investments by the MROs that developed the process; publishing those more broadly would not be well-received.

Instead IAMA is tracking that a particular STC modification was made to a specific aircraft.

Tying all of this together comes down to a focused push into digital…

IAMA also aims to reduce some of the regulatory burden around developing STCs and getting them approved. This would deliver significant benefits to the MROs and potentially reduce the costs associated with upgrades and alterations to the aircraft.

Who overhauls the overhaulers? The maintenance and repair aspects of MRO services are relatively clear-cut. The overhaul side is where things can get tricky. Whether it’s delivering a customised interior for a VVIP business jet customer, or the latest lie-flat pods for a commercial airliner’s business class cabin, or installing the latest and greatest inflight connectivity solution, MROs deliver a variety of custom services. In the highly regulated and standardised aviation world custom generally translates to expensive. Fortunately, progress is being made in helping to reduce those costs and complexities, especially with the way in-flight connectivity hardware is delivered to planes. Southwest Airlines was one of the earlier airlines to add satellite-based Wi-Fi systems to its planes. Between the supplier (Row44, now Global Eagle) and the MRO station (Lufthansa Technik) and the airline the hardware was installed and operated well across the carrier’s fleet. But as some of the older aircraft came up for returns at the end of their lease term the company faced a challenge. The radome and associated kit had to be removed to return the planes in the same condition they were received. The Technik team was able to deliver that service. But the work was not easy. In order to secure and support the extra hardware on top of the plane, the earliest installations depended on additional layers of aluminum aircraft skin and extra rivets. Lots and lots — and lots — of rivets. It worked well and was a reliable solution, but when it came time to remove the radome, the roof of the airplane looked more like a cheese grater than an airworthy surface. Ultimately a large section of the skin was replaced to restore the original condition. The work required was not cheap. It’s not that it was a bad design, but evolving standards are helping to ensure that the industry looks more at efficient and incremental work and less at rip-and-replace. In the satellite Wi-Fi space ARINC 791 is a critical specification today. It defines how a radome is affixed to the plane and how the antenna systems sit inside. It also significantly reduces the number of holes that must be punched in the fuselage and helps ease transition from one supplier to another. If the antennae are 791 mount-compliant they can be swapped relatively easily and quickly. Some airlines are looking for more than just a common mounting solution. The recently formed Seamless Air Alliance started off hoping to help co-ordinate payment processing within the airborne connectivity world. And while that remains part of the group’s charter, it is a much lower priority. The group’s main focus today is around establishing stronger standards for how connectivity hardware fits on the planes. This goes well beyond the radome and antenna mount to cover interconnects, systems in the avionics bay, wireless access points, control panels and other components. The more they become interchangeable the better off the industry becomes. The group’s CEO Jack Mandala suggests that defining standards and certifying hardware compliance will help airlines while reducing hardware production and installation costs: “[Connectivity suppliers] are a network of fierce competitors. But standards exist in the world today. And competitors all participate in standards because it is good for their industry. They can all build to a common design and enjoy the economy of scale.” It worked for the 791 standard. Airlines generally won’t consider an option that doesn’t meet those guidelines today. Getting the Seamless Air Alliance – or any other, mutually accepted – standards finalised and adopted could prove the next big step forward for the inflight connectivity world.

Future success will require living and breathing in the new digital world

With apologies to Madonna, we are living in a digital world, and future MRO technicians will need to be digital girls and boys.

This is both a challenge, as digital native generations butt up against systems and practices that have always been done a certain way — often involving paper — and an opportunity, as the next generation of engineers and systems designers rethink the hoary old chestnuts of the way things have always been. And we’ll need them to do so.

The next generation of MRO services will leverage big data to deliver just-in-time maintenance services and optimise information flow through inspection procedures. New technologies will be incorporated, automating and improving inspections and aircraft modifications. And a digital documentation trail will accompany every part and every plane from initial assembly through to the recycling bin.

…the next generation of services will require a true digital revolution in the industry

The industry must deal with a massive volume of information, ensuring that it is properly secured while also readily accessible to any party that might need access. These requirements may seem secondary to the core competencies of performing the maintenance and repair work, but if the documentation is not available then it doesn’t matter if the work occurred. Regulators are very clear on that requirement and airline operations have been suspended when the digital maintenance logs are unavailable.

But the path to success is clearly marked. MROs that can successfully navigate this transition will stand above their competitors, delivering the services needed more quickly and reliably at a lower total cost. And they just might be able to keep up with the anticipated market growth along the way.