Going Electronic #11

Free Up Resources

One of the most pressing difficulties facing aircraft maintenance facilities these days is the shortage of experienced technicians. And the situation is not predicted to get better anytime soon. WinAir can help. Do you have experienced people looking after technical record keeping? Are managers or valuable technicians wasting time sitting in front of a computer, or making log book entries, or forecasting and planning routine maintenance, or looking up parts required, when they could be out on the floor or in the field fixing aircraft? Is the routine planning and recording of maintenance suffering because the only people who can look after it are overloaded with more pressing concerns? With WinAir, you can build experience into an automated system and leave the routine upkeep to properly trained clerks. That way, the high-priced help is freed up to get back to keeping your aircraft in the air. In fact, we can even supply you with "packaged experience" in the form of Maintenance Schedule Templates (MST's) produced by experienced maintenance managers that you can "Plug In" to WinAir.

The foundation for the maintenance planning and tracking system in WinAir is the template. Each one contains all the possible maintenance requirements for a specific aircraft type including inspections and components, AWD's SB's, etc. Inspection, retirement and overhaul intervals are specified in days, months, years, hours, cycles, landings, or a "Custom Counter." Using the custom counters, unique requirements such as APU hours, helicopter RINs, gravel landings, bomb door cycles, or complex multi-engine cycle counts can be seamlessly integrated. A well designed template defines each position that must be occupied by a component, and what part numbers can be installed in each position. It also specified the default intervals for each P/N in each position. If this is done properly, it is almost impossible to miss a maintenance requirement, or install too many or too few components, or install the wrong P/N, or enter the wrong interval or next due time. And THAT means that a properly trained clerk can look after most tech-records updates.

It doesn't stop there. Scheduled maintenance forecasting is done with ONE report. Simply select the aircraft and enter the projection date to get a list of ALL the coming maintenance in the order it will come due. You don't need to print separate reports for airframe and engines, or hourly limits and calendar limits, or components and inspections. WinAir integrates all the coming requirements for the aircraft on one report so that producing it becomes a clerical task. And the way the work order system is designed, it is a simple matter to enter a coming maintenance requirement as a new task on the current scheduled maintenance work order and print a job card for the technician. Again, a well trained clerk can leave the managers and technicians free to their more pressing concerns. When the job is complete, it will automatically show up on the next cost report for the scheduled maintenance on the aircraft, complete with all the parts, repairs, and labour consumed.

With the Professional Edition, even more automation is possible with well-built templates. New scheduled maintenance tasks can be created in one step by posting coming requirements from the forecast right onto the work order. Each maintenance requirement in the template will have a list of the parts required to do the job so that the time the technician spends getting ready to do the job is further reduced. Corrective action can be recorded on the completed job cards and entered into the computer by a clerk. Entries are then automatically posted to each of the applicable Electronic Tech Logs. Every maintenance entry will include the technician, inspector, task description, corrective action, parts replaced, times on the airframe and any components replaced, etc. The Crew Chief or QA department don't need to spend days putting pen to paper when a major job is nearing completion. And for management, flexible fleet reports can also be generated to help with budgeting and major parts requirements.

A great deal of this functionality starts with a well designed template. Although you are free to build your own, we highly recommend you contact us for details on the advantages of using templates produced by our product partner, MPLAN Solutions Inc. You can visit their web site at: www.mplan.ca