How Predictive Maintenance Improves Aircraft Availability
00:00 I'm Laurent Fink from CIMdata. CIMdata is an analyst and PLM strategy consulting firm. And I am leading the media for that company. So the topic of MRO is is a very important one. And this is requiring a lot of data and a lot of information. You have to make sure that when you engage in maintenance operations, you have the correct information on the plane that you are maintaining.
00:31 You have the correct plan with the list of components that needs to be inspected, those that need to be changed. You need to make sure that you have that in your inventory. As a matter of fact, this is so important, that we have observed that over the last five years the number of delayed flights has increased by 14%. One four. And the costs of maintenance and repair operations has increased by 15%, one five, over the last five years.
01:04 So because of product profitability questions and because of the high impact of the cost of MRO, this is a hot topic, in leadership's minds on how to ensure that maintenance is done at the right time, at the right cost, on the right components. Therefore, the relationship between the product information and the supply chain is very important.
01:36 And all these things are driving, the efficiency and the effectiveness of maintenance and repair operations. For civilians, airline companies, the profitability mainly relies on in-flight time, which is not surprising because a plane is costing at least $100 million to 200, 300 million. And you know, the seat from Paris to New York
02:07 round-trip is $2,000. So there's a big disconnect between the price of product and the price of the seats. So therefore you have to finance as much as possible. And that is driving the need of, availability and readiness of aircrafts. The critical part of the readiness of the aircraft is the ability to detect the failures before they happen. People, companies are moving from a reactive maintenance or a planned maintenance to a proactive maintenance.
02:39 And the proactive maintenance is highly related to the set of information and data you can collect during the flights, during the operations, and that you can process with AI, with software, with data analytics to predict the failures before they occur, and that has a great impact on the availability and the readiness of the planes and a great impact on how planes are not delayed. Airlines are all interested in that.
03:11 In fact, I think that between 50 and 60% of them recognize that predictive maintenance is a critical element of the future operations. Because, again, this is driving aircraft readiness and aircraft readiness is driving profitability and profitability is very important. The return on investment on the plane, when you purchase a plane with such a high cost, the return on investment or the payback period is between 10 and 15 years.
03:43 So it's very important that these things are flying and transporting as many consumers as possible. The more you have information, the more you can make good decisions about where and when you will maintain the flight. That's going to be covered by the real time in-flight data information that are sent to sensors that will analyze them and predict the failures and organize the operations before they happen. So you see, it's highly related to technology,
04:14 the technology of communicating data in flight and operation data, that are driving predictive maintenance and the ability to optimize your operations in order to make sure that you have what you require to repair, you know how to repair. You have the correct information on the plane. So that's the service information. Everything that is related to the product is part of PLM, product lifecycle management.
04:44 And from that standpoint, service operations and collaboration and feedback loop with engineering is also important in that context where the field technicians can inform engineering with best practices. So at the end of the day, that closed loop communication and collaboration is improving not only the products with the in-flight information, but also the product and its maintenance and repair operations
05:17 from existing activities in the field. And that's the whole concept of product lifecycle management, in fact, which is defined as the way you manage intellectual assets that are related to a product and intellectual assets is not only the description of a product, it's also the process to manufacture it. It's also the process to maintain and repair it. So the more we move to a digital world,
05:50 the more things will need to be connected. Because the efficiencies, the speed of reaction, the agility will come from these connections. Supply chain in the MRO world is of utmost importance, because when you have a system that is informing of in-flight situations, data centers that are then analyzing the data and saying, hey, this plane, when it's landing in San Francisco, needs to be maintained
06:21 outside of the of the plan of maintenance. You must have a supply chain that can gather this information, that can process them, and that can deliver the component that is expected. And then you can also do many other things by connecting real flight or real use data and connecting them to the digital twin. You can improve your model and your understanding of how the plane, the aircraft,
06:53 is going to evolve in time and and you can simulate the performance much better. And you can be also proactive from this standpoint. So real time information, real data from the operations compared, connected to the digital twin is of utmost importance. That's what is going to drive this industry and other industries,
07:24 operations efficiencies in the future. So we believe that this era of connected systems will drive a lot of agility, a lot of efficiencies from aircraft companies and other industrial companies. And we see that today with the connection of PLM systems to ERPs, to MRO systems, and to supply chain.
07:57 The best practices that we see in this area, there are several. First, I think that the more we move to connected systems and even before connected systems, the question of the single source of truth is very important. Those who work on the design, whether they are engineers, manufacturers, people who maintain the aircrafts, or the supply chain,
08:27 they need to make sure that they have the right information at the right time. So single source of truth is a fundamental element of the expected efficiency of airline industries and all industries by the way. Single source of truth asks the question about data governance because you kind of have a single source of truth if you don't define who owns the data and who consumes it.
08:57 The process alignment is an important thing. And change management is also very important. You have to change the processes. The organizations. Then you have to make sure that people understand the change, understand why it's beneficial, what they will win in that, and how they will work better in the future. They need to understand the benefits that this is bringing to them. So these are the main best practices, I would say; single source of truth, data governance, process alignment,
09:27 organization change, and organization change management, So that's why PLM, we're saying, is a strategic business approach, because PLM is acting as much on the efficiency of operation as it acts on the effectiveness of the company, providing the right products at the right time, at the right cost, for the right customers and on the right markets.