A disparate combination of IT systems, Airline companies and MRO outsourcers are challenged to integrate operational data and add value to it by transforming it into business information for process operation analysis as well as parts inventory.

Airlines of 100+ aircrafts can typically hold inventory of 200+ thousand parts in the store. This includes high-priced items like engines, landing gears, APUs and other major equipment. Most of these parts have large life spans resulting in very high maintenance cost.

Compared to initial purchase cost. Last but not least, planned men and material (Parts and Tool) at the time of maintenance execution also will help to reduce maintenance cost.

Most leading MRO software provides standard reports/queries. None of them help the Maintenance and Engineering (M&E) section to identify potential areas for better service or saving cost. Instead, a huge additional effort is required to generate ad-hoc reports, queries and data. Many mainframe-based MRO software generates reports (standard as well as Ad-hoc) through batches which means the end user has to wait 10 to 12 hours to receive the report and act on it. This can lead to poorly planned men and material (Parts and Tool) at the time of maintenance execution which creates even higher maintenance cost.

The modern approach supported by BI&A tools enables M&E to build information entities for decision support, extract, cleanse and load data, build a Data Warehouse and drill down the data to get desired maintenance information. Building the Data Warehouse is a onetime effort and the end user can generate the reports the way they want using the tools. The major advantages of this BI&A system are:

• Desired Data is readily available
• Generates queries/reports on any permutation and combination
• High data visibility
• Enables quicker decisions by Engineering management based on recent data
• Reduces IT cost
• It is a paperless process

The advantages of the BI&A system help achieve key MRO objectives of enhanced airworthiness, high reliability, cost-effective maintenance, preventive maintenance planning and on-time flying.