Implementation and additional options

To ensure the value of the tool, we must ensure that users of VO-H are able to use it. We therefore use this section to describe how this tool should be implemented and how additional development could be used to increase the value of this tool.

5.3.1. Implementation

The tool was at foremost designed for the maintenance manager and planners within KLM. They should use this tool for additional control of the production processes and to provide them with accurate and up-to-date information of the visit. As an introduction to the users, we first presented the tool during a general demonstration. Here, the different functionalities that are included in the tool were presented and it allowed them to see the ease and possibilities of the tool. Then, we made sure that these users could access the tool by placing it on a shared database. They could use the tool, based on the instruction that were also embedded in the solution. The instructions we stored within the tool as manual and some are also displayed in Appendix 13.

However, using the tool and understanding its possibilities are two different things. To realise the benefits of the tool, the users must gain familiarity and experience with the numbers that are generated. This is quite different from their current mindset on operational control, making this step especially important. We propose that they should gain this familiarity, based on the progress updates that one can make with the tool. By recording how maintenance visits progress over several checks,

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these users can see what it for example means if 7% of the inspections still would have to be completed. The tables and graphs that were added can be used for visualizing these results.

Storing the progress of maintenance visits also creates the possibility of creating maintenance visit profiles. By determining how compared maintenance visits should behave (in terms of total hours used, the moments NRCs are created, when production phases are completed), it is possible to start creating the benchmark tool for performance measurement. The output of a scheduling tool could thus be used in comparison with the average/worst/best performance on that particular visit. Although it might take some years to realise reliable visit profiles (given the limited data entry points that are created by a limited number of visits per year per airplane & visit type), this would be the simplest way for accessing the required performance measurement indicators.

For now we can conclude that the managers and planners are indeed following this implementation plan, as the tool is still being used, almost 6 months after the tool has been demonstrated to these users. By using it only a daily basis, it helps them to solve issues related to the status updates of the visit and to clarify the interpretation of information.

5.3.2. Additional development options

We also would like to point out that there some possibilities for already expanding the tool, if certain changes in IT were completed in the planned reorganisation projects. In the current model, it was not possible to compare how well the production adhered to the generated schedule. We were promised however that the changes in Maintenix, together with the new approach for assigning jobs, would make it possible to digitally compare the scheduled and executed job cards. The functionality is already built into the tool via the ‘Daily Status’ table that is depicted below.

Table 5: Additional function that can be used to compare the scheduled work and the executed work

As can be seen in Table 5, the Daily Status contains an overview of how many cards/hours were scheduled, how much of the scheduled work was executed and how much additional work was executed. These calculations are based on the manual export from the scheduling section within Maintenix. Depending on whether a decent export will be added and whether the functionalities will be supported by the way the processes are executed, it could be possible to make the comparison

0 0 0 846 0 3176

Daily Status

Unscheduled Hours worked Scheduled Hours worked Unscheduled Cards worked on Scheduled Cards worked on Hours Scheduled

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between these two. This would help to objectify the performance of the production, compared to that of the schedule. For now, as this link currently does not exist, the values are still presented as 0.

5.4. Conclusion

The model that we created in Chapter 4 was used to create the tool that we presented in this chapter. Although not all the desired improvements could be realised due to the limitation in the IT systems, we did create a tool that will help VO-H to:

• Determine the status of the visit that is both accurate and up-to-date;

• Identify and prevent some of the job description problems in the Check Details lists; • Provide the insights that help to match resource requirement with unfinished work; • Take the first step to realise performance measurement for scheduling processes; • Provide insights into the areas or resources that should be prioritized.

In the six months after its initial demonstration, the tool already has shown it benefits, thus being a success for the production and scheduling processes. If the data that is used also is stored, then future research should be able to use the tool for finding alternative scheduling methods.

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