Efficiency in line maintenance isn't just about labor hours—it's about inventory mastery.
Minimize Passenger Exposure To Harmful Contaminants
One of the most significant exposures to contaminants is in high traffic and high touch areas. Here’s how you can…
Why You Need A Pre-draw Kit With Your Next Aircraft Maintenance Project
I’ve been fortunate to be a part of hundreds, if not thousands of maintenance check projects.
Over the years, I’ve noticed a trend. During the maintenance project, there’s always panicked emails and phone calls. Half of the calls are for material that should have been pre-planned.
It’s guaranteed. It’ll happen. Maybe even today.
Maintenance teams wait too long to purchase the material they need. So when they do purchase, they’re in a frantic rush.
The Easiest & Most Cost Effective Way To Manage Your Expendables
Is processing your aircraft expendable orders like cleaning a toilet?
It’s messy, time-consuming, and there are more productive things you could be doing.
Likely!
But whether you like it or not, these low value, high volume items are an important asset to your fleet.
They’re crucial!
Yet, they take up a ton of time.
Never Buy A High Usage Aircraft Expendable Again
What if you never bought another aircraft expendable or consumable again?
How much time and money would that free up for you? In a world of high stress and reactive decisions, dealing with aircraft expendables is a tedious task. From all the line items and quality assurance specifications, it gets overwhelming fast. You spend a lot of time stressing over these items when you should be worrying about your most important objectives for the day.
Dealing with these pesky little aircraft parts takes time for most airlines and MROs. It get’s even worse when you have a long list of these to procure. From the coordination and delivery, time and money slips through the cracks.
In our fast paced aviation world, you’re so used to working under a reactive state, but being proactive is much more efficient.
But guess what? It’s normal and I’ve seen hundreds of airlines and MROs fix this problem. This gives them more time and money to focus on their core objectives.
Consume aircraft expendables the proactive way
The definition of proactive is “…creating or controlling a situation by causing something to happen rather than responding to it after it has happened.” For your expendables it’s having what you need, when you need it, right before you have to consume it.
When the maintenance and engineering team tells the procurement department that they need 50 lines of washers, hi-loks, tape, wire, and switches, many of the times this list is procured in a rush with the best options being overlooked.
A lot of times I see airlines and MROs procure all 50 lines from 30+ different sources. This is a huge mistake in supply chain efficiency. They just doubled their freight expenditure, not to mention all of the additional processing tasks they’ll have to do.
One way to reduce this is to have a partner that’s an expert in working long list requirements. Another way is to think proactive. What can you do to beat the chaos? What can you do to pre-plan and have expendables shipped to you with the least amount of time on your shelves? How can you organize your supply chain so you have what you want, when you want it, and where you want it?
A Just In Time and On-Demand aircraft expendable and consumable solution is about streamlining your operation.
This solution isn’t for everybody. If you’re a small airline and MRO who doesn’t see the same high usage expendables on a regular basis, then building your high usage expendable and consumable list for forecasting is a waste of your time. You won’t have enough volume yet to experience the benefits, but working with a key partner for your long lists will still give you tons of benefits.
On the other side, if you are a large airline and MRO who procures the same high usage material, the best option would be to automate delivery. Just think about the benefits of not having to cut POs, overstock or worry about shipping from multiple areas. The savings is huge.
The strategic framework this is built on is to reduce stress, be more efficient, and be proactive in your decisions.
P.S. We have an amazing Just In Time and On-demand program for our airline and MRO partners. Check it out by clicking here.
3 Ways Not To Be Consumed By Consumables
In a world of non-stop AOGs, the evaluation of the aircraft can give us one more hurdle...
Consumables.
Many years ago (years I rather not try to recount) Legos was my toy of choice.
Besides the GI Joes and Hot Wheels of course.
Lego is a toy that inspires creativity and it's something to build from scratch. Piece by piece, color by color. You can make something spectacular or have a pile of useless toy bricks.
These toy bricks are a lot like aircraft consumables.
Use the wrong piece, order the wrong product, lose an important component, and you have a messy maintenance project. One that’ll lead to AOGs, lost revenue and a stressed out you.
Consumables are an integral part of airlines maintenance operations. But of course you know this.
Any way you think of it, it’s difficult keeping up with new sealant specs, higher assembly numbers and bad information. More importantly, chasing down problems is counterintuitive...and costly to you.
Dealing with hundreds of airlines, I've heard and seen it all.
Not being consumed by aircraft consumables takes a strategy.
Create a plan of attack
How do you go about ordering your consumables?
Is it a blind RFQ to hundreds of people, or do you have a method behind your madness?
Whether it's 3M 398FRP white cloth tape or window sealant, sit back and think about the most effective distribution for you.
Some things to think about are your future needs, expiration date, HAZMAT, and transport.
If you have a long consumable list think about the logistics and the time it'll take you to process the requirement. Once you start getting into multiple line items you risk increases for possible problems.
Don't process your long consumable list immediately. Think about how your requirement will best be served and follow a plan of attack that accomplishes just that.
Establish a forecast
If there's one word that can cause stress and resolve hundred of problems at the same time, it's forecast.
When you think of forecasting you're bound to think of reports, list building, statistics, and 10 others things that are "hair pull" worthy.
Relax.
Forecasting is actually not that difficult and it will save you countless of hours processing orders and thousands of dollars in inventory.
Lets look at a good example I mentioned above, the 3M 396FRP tape. Lets say last year you bought a total of 144 rolls divided between 3 orders. Now factor in the cost of each roll, processing time, and freight and you get close to an accurate per unit cost.
Over the next 12 months you forecast the same consumption rate. Building this forecast allows you to have the tape in stock when and as you need it. No overbuying or stocking for long periods of time. It significantly cuts processing and holding cost.
This is the primary purpose of our JIT program. You would receive 12 rolls per month as a part of your monthly JIT consolidation. No POs, no shipping instructions, it just shows up at your door.
Forecasting generates simplicity and simplicity saves you time and money.
Having a “go-to” resource
When you have a problem, whose your external resource?
Having internal resources is great but what if engineering tells you need Cargo Gel Tape?
Where do you go, who do you ask, who can best serve your needs?
Having a professional external resource that has your best interest at the front of everything they do is crucial.
They'll help you solve consumable hurdles, answer your questions about specification, and most important they’ll work with you to streamline your consumable distribution.
Relying on that "go-to" source will save you countless hours.
Your time is scarce and consumables have a tendency to peak their little heads and consume much of your day.
Problems are inevitable and it takes pre-thought planning, accurate forecasting, and reliable partners to alleviate most of your headaches.