Brain off, autopilot on? One of common prejudices pilots are faced with these days. Aviation is much more than that! It's hard to believe, but the parallels to operational excellence, common LEAN management tools, and especially the culture of continuous improvement, are glaring.
As a former consultant at Porsche Consulting and Director Operational Excellence, as well as Plant Manager, I would now, as an airline Pilot, like to relate our everyday work with a few examples to operational excellence, so that you can understand the parallels and transfer them to your specific process.
TPM
In this post I would like to address the topic of Total Productive Maintenance (TPM). I will only touch obvious principles, while I will go into specifics of aviation with some examples.
The idea that forms the basis for TPM is: "Planned downtimes are better than unplanned ones!" All methods, tools, and processes are derived from this thinking.
Stage 1: Service and check intervals
The core of TPM is preventive maintenance. As with every car, this is achieved in the first step by adhering to the service intervals published by the manufacturer. In principle, this works the same way for commercial aircraft. However, every airline needs a company-specific maintenance plan approved and monitored by the aviation authority.
Depending on the type of use, there are minor and major maintenance tasks and checks. This includes e.g. the daily check carried out by the "maintenance" up to the so-called D-check which is usually carried out in an external facility due to the high workload of approx. several weeks. In my opinion, however, in order to close the loop, every walk-around and all other checks, that pilots or cabin crew carry out, should also be included in the maintenance plan. Because it is precisely these regular checks that help to identify quickly abnormalities and thus increase the machine availability.
Stage 2: Trend identification & (online) monitoring
If you want to refine preventive maintenance and initiate preventive measures neither too early nor too late, there is no way around raising maintenance on a data-based level. Data can be used to determine trends in your own process with regard to wear, consumption of lubricants, and operating materials; as well as performance and setting parameters. From this, specific maintenance measures can ultimately be derived in coordination with the manufacturer. I would particularly like to draw your attention to the word “trend”. Individual values say little about the condition of a machine. Parameter development is the key to success.
Did you know, for example, that (roughly described) the wear and tear on the engines and the aircraft in general are taken into account in so-called performance factors (OFP Fuel Bias) in flight planning and in the flight management system of the aircraft? In this way, consumption, flight paths and more, are calculated more precisely. As a result of these performance factors, the trends find their way into the daily flight planning. Proactively!
Some parameters and error messages are not shown to the pilots or are only shown to a subordinate extent because they have no direct operational influence. This data then mainly relates to maintenance and is transmitted to the maintenance organization in real time, along with a lot of other data. In this way, necessary measures can be initiated on ground already during the flight in order to keep downtimes of aircraft as short as possible.
Let us apply all these thoughts to industrial and corporate processes, and try to determine the specific success factors.
Factor 1: Analyze trends with your parameters
When determining and analyzing important parameters, I would also proceed at two levels as described above. One relevant parameter level for the operator, and one level for the maintenance department. Whether the data is processed electronically or in paper form depends on the respective process, the complexity, the available IT interfaces, and the organizational structure in general; and cannot be determined clearly at this point.
In my opinion, the important thing is to ensure a relevant visualization, regardless of it being on a screen or a flipchart. This makes trends quickly visible, and necessary measures can be initiated swiftly. We are actually already in the middle of the CIP (the continuous improvement process), the heart of LEAN in the area of TPM. Because only by determining numbers, data, and facts, can improvements be worked out and tracked in a structured manner.
Let's look again at the aspect of performance factors from aviation. This can also be transferred to every machine and every process; and it plays a major role, especially in production planning and control. I am sure you are taking into account throughput times, as well as planned and unplanned downtimes, when calculating your outputs. The only question is, how do you change this data over time? Reactively? Or proactively, by analyzing trends? With a reactive adaptation, you always run behind the process. There is a saying in aviation: "Always be ahead of your aircraft, because if you are behind, it will be twice as difficult to catch up!" Where are you? Ahead or behind?
This results in the following advantages: Early detection of irregularities with regular short checks and therefore avoidance of major consequential damages; reduction of longer downtimes; more precise output forecasts and thus more reliable production planning and control; lower inventories because of more reliable planning and thus reduced working capital.
Questions for you to reflect: Do your processes include regular checks at short intervals? Do you identify trends in your parameters and visualize them? Do you have a standardized process to react proactively to trends in a structured manner?
Dividing processes into packages: Let's get back to organizational aspects. What I perceive as special. every day as a pilot. compared to my experience in industry, is how employees work through the processes in packages. By that I mean that the overall process is broken down into smaller portions. At the end of related activities, the package is e.g. completed by a checklist, or by reporting to the cockpit. One advantage is that smaller packages make it easier for every employee to find their way back into the process without errors, in the event of an interruption. In addition, a multi-level redundancy is implemented by these checks because the downstream process awaits the ready message in order to complete its own process steps. Furthermore, intermediate results can be communicated more easily. If individual packages are stuck, employees can take more targeted measures or request more specific help.
By assigning work packages and checking them with a checklist you create clear areas of responsibility for each team member.
What does this have to do with TPM? A lot! Because what is the goal of all standards, packages, and checks? The answer is simple: to check the perfect condition of the aircraft, i.e. your machine or your process, at short intervals and thus ensure high availability.
I would like to illustrate this again using the example of the turnaround process, which is more or less similar before every flight: the cabin has a checklist for every position. On the basis of this, protective and security equipment is checked (e.g. the pressure of the escape slide is controlled if the pressure is in the green area). Then each crew member reports their station ready.
The “non-flying pilot” (alternating between the captain and the co-pilot) does the so-called walk-around. He walks around the aircraft and uses a standard to check for damages or wear. Then he reports to the Captain that the aircraft is in good condition. Meanwhile, the flying pilot enters the data into the flight management system. This data is being checked by the non-flying pilot after his walk-around.
What you may not know: There is another walk-around, namely that one of the ramp agent. He makes sure that all doors are closed and that the equipment has been properly moved away from the aircraft. He then reports the aircraft ready to the cockpit with the sentence: "I confirm all doors and hatches are closed, all equipment is removed." Now the aircraft can be pushed back and started up.
Factor 2: Clear responsibilities
As you can see, in principle we have multiple redundancies when checking the packages. With the word “responsibility” I want to transfer over to other industries.
Clear responsibilities are ensured in maintenance at various levels. On one hand, through a clear, standardized process; and on the other hand, by assigning tasks, competencies and responsibilities for individual work packages. Each employee has his/her own clear area of responsibility. The biggest achievement is the overview of the process status, point at which it is easily visible at any time whether steps have been forgotten, and countermeasures can then be taken quickly.
This results in the following advantages: Clear areas of responsibility connected to specific personnel; higher sense of responsibility of the involved employees; transparency about which activities were carried out by whom.
Questions for you to reflect: Do defined employees feel responsible for certain machines? Do you have clear rules related to when one shift hands over to the next one, which areas are to be checked?
Interface management:
"If the company knew what it knows?" The saying is not that silly, because when something happens, this usually follows: "That was clear, I have already said that several times". One could pretend to be a know-it-all, but unfortunately it is actually the case that certain problems are known in the company. These are also addressed, but mostly not in a structured process. But that's exactly what matters!
I would therefore like to shed light on interface management in aviation, because this starts with the briefing of every flight. Here the cockpit already has a list of all the aircraft's irregularities. The list contains all items from the so-called technical logbook that have not yet been processed, in which the technical status of the aircraft is documented. The technical history can also be found in this book.
Furthermore, malfunctions and damage to the aircraft are entered in the technical logbook, and the pilots can also browse back through the pages when taking over the aircraft in order to get a rough overview of the most recent entries. If an error occurs frequently, the crew can determine during the flight that a certain problem has become more likely to have solidified. In any case, the surprise effect at such a moment is then rather small.
Factor 3: Organize your interface management
I also imagine something like this in an ultra-short version when handing over a machine or an entire process, e.g. between shifts or alternating teams. Irregularities should be recorded in an equivalent to a logbook. Each shift has then the possibility to turn back a few pages at the beginning of their work to get a rough overview. In addition, each shift could enter the cycles of the machine and the total number of hours, and thus check whether maintenance has carried out all the measures and checks in the maintenance plan. Ideally, the maintenance team joins according to a structured process, at defined intervals, in order to exchange current improvement ideas, to carry out defined checks, and to document them in the logbook.
By the way: did you know that we pilots are not allowed to operate any switch until the technical logbook is on board? This has something to do with the fact that it is unclear whether, and if so, which component is damaged. So, in theory, we shouldn't even switch on electricity on the plane to turn on the light, because what if, for example, the generator is defective?
This results in the following advantages: Greater overview for everybody about the actual status of the process or part of the process; fewer surprise effects with recurring errors; reduction of longer downtimes.
Questions for you to reflect: Are your interfaces such as handovers clearly defined or do they depend on the knowledge of individuals? Can you refer to the history of a machine in a structured manner? Have you already implemented most of the above in your processes? If your answers were yes, then you are certainly on the right path and I look forward to learning from you.
If you are of the opinion that you have deficits in the mentioned topics, I look forward to talking to you and possibly helping you to improve. Contact me today for a non-binding inquiry!
Sincerely,
Moritz Hirscher
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