This book is both a short introduction to the recent developments, challenges and opportunities in Aviation Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul(MRO), and at the same time, a presentation of the research focal areas and the key waypoints towards smarter and more sustainable MRO. Innovation and integration have always been key aspects of Aviation. Currently, evolutions in aircraft design, materials and production techniques are ahead of the MRO practices in use.This gap is creating demand for new knowledge to develop and operationalise adaptive, digital and sustainable MRO tools, applicable or integrated in modern aircraft systems and components.
Optimization of aviation maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) operations has been of high interest in recent years for both the knowledge institutions and the industrial community as a total of approximately $70 billion has been spent on MRO activities in 2018 which represents around 10% of an airline’s annual operational cost (IATA, 2019). Moreover, the aircraft MRO tasks vary from routine inspections to heavy overhauls and are typically characterized by unpredictable process times and material requirements. Especially nowadays due to the unprecedent COVID-19 crisis, the aviation sector is facing significant challenges, and the MRO companies strive to strengthen their competitive position and respond to the increasing demand for more efficient, cost-effective, and sustainable processes. Currently, most maintenance strategies employ preventive maintenance as an industrial standard, which is based on fixed and predetermined schedules. Preventive maintenance is a long-time preferred strategy, due to increased flight safety and relatively simple implementation (Phillips et al., 2010). However, its main drawback stems from the fact that the actual time of failure and the replacement interval of a component are hard to predict resulting in an inevitable suboptimal utilization of material and labor. This has two repercussions: first, the reduced availability of assets, the reduced capacity of maintenance facilities, and the increased costs for both the MRO provider and the operator. Second, the increased waste from an environmental standpoint, as the suboptimal use of assets, is also associated with wasted remaining lifetime for aircraft parts which are replaced, while this isn’t yet necessary (e.g., Nguyen et al., 2019).The recently introduced, condition-based maintenance (CBM) and predictive maintenance (PdM) data-driven strategies aim to reduce maintenance costs, maxi-mize availability, and contribute to sustainable operations by offering tailored pro-grams that can potentially result in optimally planned, just-in-time maintenance meaning reduction in material waste and unneeded inspections.
The full potential of predictive maintenance has not yet been utilised. Current solutions focus on individual steps of the predictive maintenance cycle and only work for very specific settings. The overarching challenge of predictive maintenance is to leverage these individual building blocks to obtain a framework that supports optimal maintenance and asset management. The PrimaVera project has identified four obstacles to tackle in order to utilise predictive maintenance at its full potential: lack of orchestration and automation of the predictive maintenance workflow, inaccurate or incomplete data and the role of human and organisational factors in data-driven decision support tools. Furthermore, an intuitive generic applicable predictive maintenance process model is presented in this paper to provide a structured way of deploying predictive maintenance solutions.
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Korte projectomschrijving: Aanleg en operation & maintenance van windparken op zee, hebben een grote behoefte aan ‘first time right’ in de gehele keten. Onderhoud en de engineering zijn complex en de kennis en innovatieve initiatieven zijn versnipperd bij zowel MKB als grootbedrijven en kennisinstellingen. Verbeteringen zijn nodig binnen de thema’s Cable Maintenance, Bolting, Remote Operations and predictive maintenance, Rotor Blades én Energieopwekking, -opslag en –balancering. Offshore wind zorgt voor een groeiende werkgelegenheid voor (N)NL. HG : accent op realisatie testfaciliteiten en ontwikkelen van opleidingen en onderzoek,
INEDIT creates an open innovation European DIT ecosystem for sustainable furniture co-creation. It channels the creativity of consumers, shapes it through designers' professional skills, and makes it viable by leveraging on the expertise of production specialists in order to deliver sustainable, smart and personalized new products in a shorter time to market. INEDIT intends to demonstrate the capacity to turn the well-known 'Do It Yourself' (DIY) approach applied by individuals within FabLabs into a professional approach named 'Do It Together' (DIT).The DIT approach will be applied by customers and professional producers, especially SMEs, for conveying higher customer satisfaction through customer-driven production. DIT is a novel approach capitalizing on the knowledge, creativity and ideas of design and engineering conceptualized by interdisciplinary stakeholders and sometimes even new actors. It is powered by existing European innovation ecosystems shaping new products across EU countries.INEDIT demonstrates the approach through four cross use cases with high societal impact: sustainable wood panels manufacturing and 3D-printing of wood, 3D printing of recycled plastic and 'smartification'.Sustainability and consideration of individual preferences, especially of women and men, will be our guiding thread. INEDIT addresses societal challenges such as contribution to reduce the amount of produced CO2 in focusing on European-wide production, creation and maintenance of EU-wide job opportunities. This will lead to new business opportunities supported by business model innovation.Moreover, these innovative networked local manufacturing competences and production facilities across the EU will solve ethical concerns within the manufacturing network. INEDIT intends to demonstrate, through its twin - digital and physical - platform, the potential innovation around social manufacturing within the circular economy in designing globally while producing locally.
Service logistics in de vliegtuigonderhoudindustrie is een zeer kennisintensieve en concurrerende markt. De meest cruciale factor in deze industrie is het laag houden van de downtime tijdens maintenance, repair en overhaulactiviteiten. Met name opslag, distributie en het managen van spare parts spelen hierin een belangrijke rol. Om tijdig vliegtuigen te kunnen onderhouden, hebben onderhoudsbedrijven vaak duizenden onderdelen, van kleine ophangpennen tot zeer dure motoren, op voorraad. Hierin zit dan ook de paradox: onderhoudskosten dalen door lagere down time en grote voorraden zorgen op hun beurt weer voor hoge warehousing kosten. Het lectoraat Aviation Engineering voert thans een RAAK-MKB project uit waarin primair wordt onderzocht of historische onderhoudsdata kan worden gebruikt voor MRO-onderhoudsplannen die de downtime verlagen. Gaandeweg de uitvoering van dit project is echter gebleken dat niet alle onderhoud van te voren gepland kan worden en dat juist real time data tijdens de vlucht erg relevant is voor snel en efficiënt onderhoud. De doelstelling van dit KIEM-project is enerzijds het vergaren van nieuwe kennis en inzichten over service logistics en het daarmee aanjagen nieuw onderzoek waarin wordt onderzocht of de inzet van real time big data bijdraagt aan het verminderen van de downtime. Anderzijds wordt onderzocht of nieuwe samenwerkingen (met IT-bedrijven) mogelijk zijn die voorraadkosten verminderen. Onderzoek wordt gedaan naar: 1. Knelpunten voor de inzet van real time big data in relatie tot MRO-activiteiten. 2. Vraagarticulatie en samenwerkingsmogeljkheden met nieuwe mkb-bedrijven. 3. Spare part warehousing efficiëntie (parts pooling). 4. Infrastructuur en standaarden voor opslag en toegankelijkheid van gezamenlijke en individuele (bedrijfsgevoelige) data. De HvA, NAG en JetSupport verwachten dat met dit project nieuwe mkb-onderhoudsbedrijven, vliegtuigmaatschappijen en overheden gaandeweg het project gaan aanhaken. Uitkomsten zijn enerzijds nieuwe kennis en inzichten op het gebied van service logistics en anderzijds commitment voor een vervolgonderzoek op het lopende RAAK-project.
