MRO and 145 organizations are required to have a Production Planning function, however this could in fact be delivered as a sub department of Base Maintenance. Developing a Stand alone Production Planning Department may provide significant benefits in the management of the maintenance process.
The Production Planning department provides (if fully utilized) a key opportunity to enable organisations to understand where inefficiencies exist within the organization.
MRO & 145 organisations who are able to provide focus and commitment to the role of Production Planner see significant returns on the investment as a result of the reduction of “lost time” and in efficient practices.
A comprehensive understanding of best practice aviation and business processes will support the Production Control Staff to generate efficiencies in the Maintenance Planning Process.
The Production Planning team may typically coordinate with many stakeholders around the business including the Hangar, Stores, Workshops, Commercial and Technical Services Departments.
Amongst the many duties include the general oversight of the facilities, general work preparation, responsive to environmental conditions, inventory control. subcontract Co-ordination, planning of safety critical tasks, managing hangar availability, man hours estimation and availability and the control of approved data.
One of the tasks which falls on the senior managers in an organization is to consider what “we require” from the Production Planning department. In fact compliance with regulatory requirements may only occupy 20% of the functions of the PP Department. The remaining activities provide the Management team with the data which allows the organization to function in the best way possible. Effectively this means that the other 80% can be organizationally optimizing activities.
Typical activities may include pre provisioning of resources. Documentation, detailed task packaging and logistics for forthcoming work programs, monitoring progress versus plan for production work.
Production Planning will monitor and update production schedules and performance charts, implement and obtain feedback for evaluation and future improvement, in addition to review the capacity situation, making recommendations on utilization of labour and equipment resources
Production Planning are stakeholders in Work Handover and Recording, which is one of the most Critical Factor in Maintenance Safety. In fact a lack of written logging has been factor in several accidents / incidents, unfortunately complacency in work causes most handovers to be verbal.
Aviation Maintenance Production Planning should be tasked with a number of daily goals including –
Ensuring that the all the business processes and maintenance and repair challenges are addressed in the most economic and operationally-flexible manner. To ensure the maintenance of the most stringent airworthiness standards is delivered, without compromising quality.
Sofema Aviation Services provides 1, 2 & 3 Day Production Planning Training courses, the next course due to be delivered is scheduled for Tues 12th May in the facilities of Jet Aviation Dubai Airport Free Zone. For details please see www.sassofia.com or email office@sassofia.com
