International Journal of Production Economics 218 (2019) 1–15

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International Journal of Production Economics

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijpe

A supporting framework for maintenance capacity planning and scheduling: T

Development and application in the aircraft MRO industry
Duarte Dinisa,∗, Ana Barbosa-Póvoaa, Ângelo Palos Teixeirab
a
Center for Management Studies, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, 1049-001, Lisboa, Portugal
b
Center for Marine Technology and Ocean Engineering, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, 1049-001, Lisboa, Portugal

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: This paper proposes a framework for the qualitative and quantitative characterization of maintenance work to
Maintenance data support Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) organizations in performing capacity planning and scheduling.
Data treatment and analysis A quantitative assessment based on 372 maintenance projects collected at a Portuguese aircraft MRO confirms
Capacity planning that a significant part of the maintenance work is stochastic in nature, given the amount of unscheduled
Scheduling
maintenance. The proposed framework, entitled FRamework for Aircraft Maintenance Estimation (FRAME), is
Risk
intended to allow MROs in managing this uncertainty throughout the maintenance planning process and com-
prises for that end a set of requirements for data treatment and a method for data analysis. The established
requirements address important shortcomings found in the collected data that prevented the use of maintenance
data for capacity planning and scheduling as is. The developed method for data analysis, entitled 3-Dimensional
Maintenance Data Analysis (3D-MDA), is based on a space-time-skill coordinate system in which indicators are
calculated from historical data to comprehensively characterize the expected maintenance work. Space refers to
the aircraft work zone where maintenance is performed, time refers to the project work phase when maintenance
is performed, and skill refers to the type of technicians required for maintenance to be performed. The estab-
lished coordinates address the limitations of reviewed techniques by allowing accurate estimations of required
resources for capacity planning and an extended range of constraints for maintenance scheduling. Being generic
in nature, FRAME is applicable to maintenance in other industries, or even to other activities with due adap-
tations.

1. Introduction
Maintenance is performed in all industries to prevent or reduce the
adverse effect of failures1 and to maximize system availability at a
minimum cost (Löfsten, 2000). Despite its strategic relevance, main-
tenance is still often regarded as a non-core activity, characterized by a
set of activities that need to be performed to keep a certain system
functioning (Marquez and Gupta, 2006; Pinjala et al., 2006). This is not
the case of aircraft Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) companies,
which produce maintenance services and whose interests and goals are
different from those of a system operator (Kobbacy and Murthy, 2008),
such as an airline. Concerning maintenance, the objective of airlines is
to retain or restore the inherent levels of reliability of aircraft to keep
them airworthy at a minimum cost, while the objective of MROs is to
achieve high service levels and to maximize profit through service ef-
ficiency and costs reduction.
Aircraft maintenance requirements are established by manu-
facturers (OEMs), suppliers, regulatory authorities, and operators in a
process called the Maintenance Review Board (MRB) process (Ahmadi
et al., 2010). These requirements serve as the basis for the development
of aircraft maintenance programs, consisting of different maintenance
interventions, called checks, performed at regular intervals throughout
the aircraft service life. The checks themselves comprise scheduled tasks2
and unscheduled tasks. Scheduled tasks refer mainly to prespecified in-
spections carried out at predetermined intervals, being the work es-
sentially deterministic. On the contrary, unscheduled tasks, which re-
sult from the execution of scheduled ones and depend on the
probabilistic nature of failures, present a work inherently stochastic (Al-

Corresponding author.
∗

E-mail addresses: duarte.dinis@tecnico.ulisboa.pt (D. Dinis), apovoa@tecnico.ulisboa.pt (A. Barbosa-Póvoa), teixeira@centec.tecnico.ulisboa.pt (Â.P. Teixeira).
1
According to the MSG-3 document (ATA, 2007), failure is ‘the inability of an item to perform within previously specified limits’.
2
Task is defined by the Air Transport Association (ATA) as ‘an action or set of actions required to achieve a desired outcome which restores an item to or maintains
an item in serviceable condition, including inspection and determination of condition’ (ATA, 2007).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2019.04.029
Received 15 May 2017; Received in revised form 11 February 2019; Accepted 23 April 2019
Available online 03 May 2019
0925-5273/ © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
D. Dinis, et al.
Fares and Duffuaa, 2009). The unscheduled work is completely known
and fully characterized only at the end of the aircraft inspection
(Reményi and Staudacher, 2014). This fact results in a high degree of
uncertainty regarding maintenance work (Márquez, 2007a). On the one
hand, the uncertainty about the work may originate capacity problems,
in which the planned resources are insufficient, or otherwise excessive,
to perform the actual maintenance work. On the other hand, current
planning methods do not characterize the maintenance work effectively
in terms of where in the aircraft is it expected to be performed, when in
the maintenance intervention is it expected to occur, or what technical
skills is it expected to require. This hinders the possibility of tactical
plans to contain a pre-scheduling of the maintenance work, something
that would allow MROs to identify and manage potential future con-
straints during the execution of maintenance interventions. Un-
scheduled maintenance has been identified in the literature as a rightful
concern for MROs regarding, not only capacity planning and sche-
duling, but also budgeting, inventory management, and on-time com-
pletion of maintenance projects (Samaranayake, 2006; Samaranayake
and Kiridena, 2012). Samaranayake (2006), mentioning an airline in-
vestigation report, states that about 50% of aircraft maintenance work
is due to unscheduled maintenance. Results from the quantitative as-
sessment performed in Section 4 show that this value can be higher.
Based on a dataset referring to 372 aircraft maintenance projects from a
Portuguese MRO, this paper presents a quantitative assessment on the air-
craft maintenance work, in terms of scheduled and unscheduled main-
tenance workloads, and proposes a framework for the qualitative and
quantitative characterization of the maintenance work with the aim of
supporting MROs in the maintenance planning process. The proposed fra-
mework, entitled FRamework for Aircraft Maintenance Estimation (FRAME),
was developed in cooperation with experts from the host MRO, according to
their inputs and addressing their needs, and the motivation for the current
research work has been the inability to use the maintenance data as is with
current techniques to effectively perform maintenance capacity planning
and scheduling. This research work addresses the limitations of real main-
tenance data and current techniques, but it is not intended to constitute a
method for capacity planning and scheduling per se. Instead, it is intended to
be used as a supporting framework for effective capacity planning and
scheduling with currently available methods, comprising for that end a set
of requirements for historical data treatment and future data recording, and
a method for data analysis. First, the data requirements address four im-
portant shortcomings found in the collected data: (1) the ambiguous clas-
sification of maintenance interventions by those involved in the planning
process; (2) the inability of distinguishing between internal and external
zones directly by using the industry standard aircraft zoning (ATA, 1999);
(3) the inexistence of standard time frames to characterize maintenance
work temporally within maintenance interventions; and (4) the use of re-
dundant skills denominations resulting from past organizational changes.
These issues severely hamper data analysis for capacity planning and
scheduling. If systematically treated and recorded, according to coherent
and unambiguous classification procedures, maintenance data may prove
invaluable for maintenance planning and scheduling. Second, the developed
data analysis method, the 3-Dimensional Maintenance Data Analysis (3D-
MDA), consists in a space-time-skill coordinate system in which each co-
ordinate represents an identifiable element, intended to be used for the
qualitative and quantitative characterization of maintenance work with an
adequate level of detail and tractability. Space refers to the aircraft work
zone, i.e. the physical space, where maintenance is to be performed. It al-
lows the definition of capacity limits, particularly manpower, to each co-
ordinate. Time refers to the project work phase, i.e. the instant, when
maintenance is to be performed. It allows the definition of dependencies
between coordinates, such as precedence relationships. Finally, skill refers to
the type of technicians required for maintenance to be performed. It as-
sociates a technical skill to each coordinate. By qualitatively characterizing
the maintenance work through these coordinates, the 3D-MDA enables a
pre-scheduling of work in the early stages of the maintenance planning
process, a time when formal maintenance tasks, particularly unscheduled
2
International Journal of Production Economics 218 (2019) 1–15
maintenance tasks, are still not known. In addition, by quantitatively
characterizing the maintenance work through maintenance estimation in-
dicators in the established coordinates, the 3D-MDA provides a means to
control the uncertainty of important maintenance resources such as man-
power, spare parts and materials, and costs (Löfsten, 2000; Muchiri et al.,
2011). Furthermore, risk assessment is also possible to be performed, al-
lowing potential problematic coordinates to be identified within defined
risks (Chemweno et al., 2015). Through the use of FRAME, MRO organi-
zations gain a detailed picture about the content and scope of maintenance
interventions early in the planning process, a capability of the utmost im-
portance to improve the effective and efficient use of resources within
maintenance operations.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, a
formal definition of maintenance is presented and the aircraft main-
tenance planning process is described. In Section 3, three of the most
important problems faced by MROs are described and the relevance of
the proposed framework in addressing them is explained. In Section 4, a
quantitative assessment on the aircraft maintenance work, in terms of
scheduled and unscheduled maintenance workloads, is presented. In
Section 5, the framework for the qualitative and quantitative char-
acterization of the maintenance work is introduced. Section 6 presents
the implementation procedure of the proposed framework and its
benefits for the maintenance planning process. Section 7 indicates re-
search opportunities related with the developed framework. And, fi-
nally, Section 8 draws the conclusions on the performed research work.
2. Maintenance planning process
Maintenance (Moubray, 1997; Mobley, 2004; Kelly, 2006) consists of all
actions performed throughout the live cycle of an item3 to retain it in a
functioning state, or to restore it into such state (Gits, 1992). The main-
tenance actions that aim at retaining the operating conditions of an item are
denoted as preventive maintenance, referred to as scheduled maintenance in
aviation and formally defined as ‘all the individual maintenance tasks per-
formed according to the maintenance time limitations’ (FAA, 2012). On the
contrary, the maintenance actions that are directed at restoring the oper-
ating conditions of an item compose what is called as corrective maintenance,
referred to as unscheduled maintenance in aviation and originated from
scheduled tasks, pilot reports, or data analysis (ATA, 2007).
The typical maintenance planning process of aircraft MRO compa-
nies is depicted in Fig. 1. When an MRO receives a request for quotation
for a given maintenance service, information is gathered such as the
aircraft type, its tail number, the identification of the client and/or
operator, and the type of maintenance intervention that is to be per-
formed. This information serves as input for the development of a
tactical plan, which, in turn, originates a proposal. The proposal, be-
sides establishing a delivery date for the aircraft, includes workload and
cost estimates for the scheduled and unscheduled maintenance work.
Being essentially deterministic, actual scheduled maintenance is ex-
pected to present little deviation relatively to the work that is estimated
in the proposal. On the contrary, given its inherent uncertainty, actual
unscheduled maintenance may present important differences relatively
to the estimated work. Despite all the uncertainty, a commitment must
be made between the MRO and the client regarding the aircraft delivery
date and the service price (Eickemeyer et al., 2014a). If the proposal is
accepted, a project is formalized through a service contract (Martin,
1997), a document that establishes the conditions under which main-
tenance services are to be provided (Kobbacy and Murthy, 2008;
Murthy et al., 2015). At this point in time, the scheduled maintenance
tasks, established by the maintenance requirements of a given aircraft
type, should be known and should be included in the maintenance
3
As defined in the European Standard EN 13306:2001 (CEN, 2001), an item is
‘any part, component, device, subsystem, functional unit, equipment or system
that can be individually considered’.
D. Dinis, et al.
Fig. 1. MRO planning process.
project. Regarding the unscheduled maintenance, only a rough and
uncharacterized workload estimate exists, since, as mentioned before,
the unscheduled work is only known completely during the execution
of the maintenance intervention.
3. Maintenance planning problems
According to experts from the host MRO, three of the most important
problems affecting the maintenance planning process described in the
previous Section include: (1) capacity planning; (2) spare parts manage-
ment; and (3) tasks scheduling. These problems have already been identi-
fied as key problems in maintenance industries (Guide et al., 1997), parti-
cularly in aircraft maintenance (Samaranayake and Kiridena, 2012).
In this Section, the problems are defined and a review of methods
addressing each is presented, specifically in aircraft maintenance con-
texts. The capacity planning problem is presented in Section 3.1, spare
parts management is explained in Section 3.2, and tasks scheduling is
addressed in Section 3.3. Finally, the relevance of the proposed fra-
mework in addressing these problems is discussed in Section 3.4.
3.1. Capacity planning
From the performed literature review, the distinction between
maintenance planning and maintenance scheduling is not always clear.
Duffuaa and Al-Sultan (1997) state that maintenance planning consists,
among other things, in the identification of the work to be planned and
in the estimation of required manpower, while maintenance scheduling
consists in the development of schedules for the planned maintenance
jobs.4 Some authors call the former problem as workforce scheduling
(Alfares, 1999) and the latter problem as tasks scheduling (Safaei et al.,
2011). These definitions are used in this paper, in particular to differ-
entiate the models addressing each problem.
As it is the case for aircraft MRO organizations, maintenance can be
regarded as a production process that needs to be planned (Budai et al.,
2008). Haroun and Duffuaa (2009) state that maintenance capacity
planning establishes the different required resources to execute the
maintenance work, but its critical aspect is to determine the exact
number of technicians and respective skills to face the future work
demand given its uncertainty. This idea is shared by Márquez (2007a).
To Al-Fares and Duffuaa (2009), maintenance capacity planning is
concerned with the balance between available capacity and required
capacity. The authors state that available capacity is mostly constant
since it is based on the maintenance resources that a company pos-
sesses, while required capacity is mostly fluctuating given the
4
In this paper the words ‘job’, ‘activity’, and ‘task’ are presented as synonyms,
all referring to a maintenance action.
3
International Journal of Production Economics 218 (2019) 1–15
probabilistic nature of failure. On the one hand, if the available capa-
city is higher than the required capacity, underutilization of resources
and financial inefficiency occur. On the other hand, if the available
capacity is lower than the required capacity, delays will surely happen
with potential financial penalties and reputational damages to the
maintenance organization.
Taking into account the fact that maintenance can be interpreted as
a production process, Mula et al. (2006) present an extensive literature
review on production planning models including: (1) Material Require-
ments Planning/Manufacturing Resources Planning (MRP/MRPII); (2)
analytical, referring to techniques developed within Operations Re-
search (OR); (3) simulation; and (4) artificial intelligence. A review of
each of these models applied in aircraft maintenance contexts is pro-
vided in the next paragraphs.
Very briefly, the MRP provides support for the management of materials
used in production processes (Murthy and Ma, 1991; Ghobbar and Friend,
2004), while the MRPII, besides materials, encompasses resources man-
agement (Pochet and Wolsey, 2006). These methodologies have been em-
ployed for capacity planning in aircraft MROs, not without limitations
(Samaranayake et al., 2002; Samaranayake and Kiridena, 2012).
Analytical models, including mathematical and stochastic programming,
have been applied to maintenance problems (Dekker, 1996; Scarf, 1997;
Dekker and Scarf, 1998), and to capacity planning in a broader scope (Van
den Bergh et al., 2013a; Martínez-Costa et al., 2014; De Bruecker et al.,
2015a). Particularly in aircraft maintenance, Dijkstra et al. (1991), Dijkstra
et al. (1994) develop a Decision Support System (DSS) for capacity planning
at KLM, the Royal Dutch Airlines, which comprises a database module, an
analysis module, and a graphical user interface. The analysis module in
particular uses workload estimates per aircraft type for optimizing the size
and organization of the workforce, calculated from ‘maintenance opera-
tions’ and ‘maintenance standards’. In Yang et al. (2003) and Yan et al.
(2004), the authors develop mixed integer programs for aircraft main-
tenance manpower planning. Maintenance demand is estimated from ‘re-
quired maintenance tasks’, ‘usually converted to different types of working-
hours’ (Yan et al., 2004). Other authors addressing capacity planning pro-
blems in aircraft maintenance through OR techniques include Alfares
(1999), Beliën et al. (2012), Beliën et al. (2013), Van den Bergh et al.
(2013b), De Bruecker et al. (2015b), Chen et al. (2017), or De Bruecker
et al. (2018).
Regarding simulation models, Duffuaa and Andijani (1999) propose
a simulation model that integrates aircraft maintenance activities and
aircraft operations. The model comprises several modules, including a
planning and scheduling module that uses data about workload demand
and spare parts demand by maintenance jobs, and a performance mea-
sures module that collects and computes statistics about maintenance
performance. Bazargan-Lari et al. (2003) also develop a simulation
model for manpower planning at Continental Airlines.
Finally, examples of artificial intelligence models applied to aircraft
D. Dinis, et al.
maintenance capacity planning include the work of Eickemeyer et al.
(2013), Eickemeyer et al. (2014a), Eickemeyer et al. (2014b), and Dinis
et al. (2018), in which Bayesian networks (BNs) (Pearl, 1988) are used
to estimate the workload of maintenance interventions.
3.2. Spare parts management
In aircraft maintenance, spare parts5 are kept in stock to prevent or
reduce the frequency and duration of interruptions to the maintenance
process, as the spare parts often have variable or unknown supply lead-
times and present highly random demand (Diallo et al., 2009). This
type of demand is called lumpy (Syntetos et al., 2005), characterized by
random demand periods and erratic demand size, and the sources of
lumpiness in aircraft spare parts demand have been studied in the lit-
erature (Ghobbar and Friend, 2002; Lowas and Ciarallo, 2016; Guo
et al., 2017). Nonetheless, stocked spare parts may be prone to ob-
solescence or degradation and are hardly resalable (Diallo et al., 2009),
making spare parts management a paramount activity. Sherbrooke
(2004) presents a comprehensive review on modeling techniques ap-
plied to spare parts management and inventory optimization, ex-
tensively illustrated with examples applied to aircraft.
Ghobbar and Friend (2003) compare 13 forecasting methods for
intermittent spare parts demand in aviation and conclude that weighted
moving averages (WMA) and exponentially weighted moving averages
(EWMA) are superior to traditional forecasting methods used by air-
lines, such as the single exponential smoothing (SES) and component
service life (mean time between replacement, or MTBR). Regattieri et al.
(2005) reach similar conclusions. Romeijnders et al. (2012) recognize
that, at least partially, the intermittency and lumpiness of aircraft spare
parts demand are due to the maintenance operations.
Others authors address the problem of spare parts demand in air-
craft maintenance with mathematical programming models
(Deshpande et al., 2006; Wang, 2012; Zanjani and Nourelfath, 2014; Gu
et al., 2015). Not directly related to aircraft maintenance, Van
Horenbeek et al. (2013) present a review on models addressing the joint
problem of maintenance and inventory optimization.
3.3. Tasks scheduling
In some literature addressing the aviation industry, maintenance
scheduling is the assignment of aircraft to flights and the determination
of when and where each aircraft should undergo different maintenance
interventions (Moudani and Mora-Camino, 2000; Sriram and Haghani,
2003). This problem is also known as the aircraft maintenance routing
problem (Safaei and Jardine, 2018). Such problem is a fleet manage-
ment problem faced by airlines, and not a maintenance management
problem faced by MROs. In this paper, scheduling is defined as the
process of assigning resources to maintenance tasks and establishing
time frames for the tasks to be accomplished (Márquez, 2007b). This
problem has been extensively addressed in the literature, particularly in
aircraft maintenance contexts.
One area that has extensively addressed aircraft maintenance
scheduling is OR. Dekker and Scarf (1998) state that the problem un-
derlying aircraft maintenance scheduling is a job scheduling problem
on parallel machines (i.e. maintenance technicians) with precedence,
deadline, and machine utilization and availability constraints. Ahire
et al. (2000) characterize the problem of scheduling aircraft main-
tenance tasks within workforce and skills constraints as a variation of
the job shop scheduling problem with n-jobs (i.e. maintenance tasks) and
m-machines of different types (i.e. maintenance technicians with dif-
ferent skills). Examples of other authors addressing the aircraft main-
tenance scheduling problem through OR techniques include Duffuaa
and Al-Sultan (1997), Quan et al. (2007), Safaei et al. (2011), Bajestani
5
Also known as service parts (Fortuin and Martin, 1999).
4
International Journal of Production Economics 218 (2019) 1–15
and Beck (2011), or Bertsimas et al. (2014).
Not addressing directly the tasks scheduling problem, Papakostas
et al. (2010) propose a multi-criteria decision making model to produce
and evaluate different maintenance plans, taking into account main-
tenance tasks that have to be performed and those that can be deferred
to a subsequent, more advantageous, opportunity.
Two techniques that are widely applied in maintenance scheduling
(Márquez, 2007b; Al-Turki, 2009), particularly in aircraft maintenance
scheduling (Samaranayake et al., 2002; Samaranayake and Kiridena,
2012), are the well-known Program Evaluation and Review Technique
(PERT) and the Critical Path Method (CPM) (e.g. Baker and Trietsch,
2009; Trietsch and Baker, 2012). Both techniques are used for the
scheduling of project networks, in which a project represents a sequence
of well-defined tasks called activities (Baker and Trietsch, 2009).
An interesting work is that of Samaranayake et al. (2002). The au-
thors combine CPM with MRP and production activity control (PAC) into
a ‘unitary structuring technique’. The proposed approach is intended to
overcome the limitations of the individual techniques when applied to
planning and scheduling of aircraft maintenance projects. The previous
work is further developed in Samaranayake and Kiridena (2012).
3.4. Discussion
From the literature review presented in the previous Sections, one can
conclude that some research has been already devoted to the problems
faced by aircraft maintenance organizations. Nonetheless, most of the ap-
proaches are problem-specific and do not integrate the three problems
identified as being among the most important faced by MROs. In Section
3.1, most of the presented works focus on manpower planning and do not
take into account the availability of spare parts and materials, nor the
scheduling of individual maintenance tasks. In Section 3.2, the presented
works on forecasting methods address spare parts demand per se, not taking
into account the maintenance tasks from which the demand originates.
Limited integration is achieved between spare parts demand and main-
tenance operations data in the works addressing aircraft spare parts demand
with mathematical programming models. However, none of the analyzed
works addresses the availability of manpower to perform maintenance
tasks, nor the scheduling of the tasks themselves. Finally, in Section 3.3,
most of the papers using OR techniques only consider workforce constraints
in the tasks scheduling problem, not considering, at least explicitly, other
maintenance resources such as spare parts and materials. The availability of
these other maintenance resources is often disregard in order to limit the
complexity of the models (Quan et al., 2007; Safaei et al., 2011).
The proposed framework, FRAME, addresses the aforementioned
limitations by integrating the planning and scheduling of maintenance
activities, i.e. the tactical and operational phases of the planning pro-
cess (Fig. 1), and by considering the availability of all maintenance
resources simultaneously, including manpower, spare parts and mate-
rials, and costs. In addition, it possesses the distinctive feature of al-
lowing the qualitative and quantitative characterization of maintenance
work from historical data in terms of aircraft work zones, project work
phases, and technical work skills. As mentioned earlier, FRAME is not
intended to constitute a method for capacity planning and scheduling
per se. Instead, it is intended to be used as a supporting framework for
effective capacity planning and scheduling with currently available
methods, comprising for that end a set of requirements for data treat-
ment and recording, and a method for data analysis. Regarding capacity
planning, papers such as Dijkstra et al. (1991), Dijkstra et al. (1994),
Yang et al. (2003), or Yan et al. (2004) are not explicit regarding the
estimation of maintenance workloads. It is a fact that scheduled
maintenance can be easily estimated from prespecified tasks, but this is
not the case of unscheduled maintenance since there are no standar-
dized tasks. Through FRAME, the maintenance work is qualitatively
and quantitatively characterized, allowing accurate workload estima-
tions from historical maintenance data, particularly for the unscheduled
maintenance. Regarding spare parts management, spare parts demand
D. Dinis, et al. International Journal of Production Economics 218 (2019) 1–15

is often treated independently from maintenance demand, as discussed Table 1

before. Deshpande et al. (2006) faced the problem of not having a direct Maintenance checks, work packages, and intervals for the considered aircraft
link between the spare parts database and the maintenance database. type operating under ‘normal utilization’.
With the proposed framework, the space-time-skill coordinates are able Check Maintenance Packages Intervals
to incorporate all the required maintenance resources, linking spare
parts demand and maintenance demand automatically. Finally, re- Routine Routine 100 FH or 14 Days
A A 500 FH
garding tasks scheduling, the established space-time-skill coordinates
2A A+2A 1000 FH
may be used as jobs in analytical models (Safaei et al., 2011), or as 3A A+3A 1500 FH
activities in project scheduling methods (Baker and Trietsch, 2009). In 4A A+2A+4A 2000 FH/FC
addition, by defining spatial, temporal, and skills coordinates, capable 5A A+5A 2500 FH/FC or 15 MO
C A+2A+5A + C 5000 FH/FC or 30 MO
of incorporating all required maintenance resources, the coordinate
2C A+2A+4A+5A + C+2C 10,000 FH/FC or 60 MO
system enables an extended range of constraints to be taken into ac- 3C A+2A+3A+5A + C+3C 15,000 FH/FC or 90 MO
count, namely physical space constraints, precedence constraints, and 4C A+2A+4A+5A + C+2C+4C 20,000 FH/FC or 120 MO
resources availability constraints.

4. Aircraft maintenance quantitative assessment

This Section presents the quantitative assessment performed on the

aircraft maintenance work, in terms of scheduled and unscheduled
maintenance workloads, using real data from a Portuguese aircraft
MRO.
The used dataset refers to 372 maintenance projects, occurred be-
tween September 2002 and December 2015, for a given aircraft type,
operating under ‘scheduled’ and ‘non-scheduled’ commercial services
(ICAO, 2013). To ensure that the quantitative assessment is performed
to aircraft operating under the same maintenance requirements, the
initial dataset is reduced to 203 projects. The analyzed aircraft were
operating under ‘normal utilization’6 and according to the maintenance
requirements established by the aircraft OEM and presented in Table 1.
Given the large size of the dataset and the fact that all aircraft were Fig. 2. Average scheduled and unscheduled maintenance workloads for ‘C’
operating under scheduled services (ICAO, 2013), the quantitative as- checks.
sessment hereby presented is considered representative of aircraft
maintenance in commercial aviation in a broader scope.
maintenance are required. High ratios are also obtained for the 15,000
Samaranayake (2006) recognizes that the uncertainty of main-
FH ‘3C’, 30,000 FH ‘2C’, and 40,000 FH ‘4C’ checks, with values of
tenance work, resulting particularly from the unscheduled main-
154%, 151%, and 181%, respectively. Fig. 3 also shows that an upward
tenance, is a problem for maintenance planning and scheduling. The
trend in the ratio between unscheduled and scheduled workloads exist
author also states that about 50% of the total maintenance work refers
throughout the service life of the studied aircraft type.
to unscheduled maintenance. The results presented in the next Section
show that this value can be higher.
4.2. Discussion

4.1. Results
The results hereby presented are average workloads for the sched-
uled and unscheduled maintenance of each of the studied checks – ‘C’,
‘2C’, ‘3C, and ‘4C’ checks (Table 1). These checks constitute what is
known as heavy maintenance (Samaranayake and Kiridena, 2012) and
each check repeats itself over the service life of aircraft. For example,
when an aircraft reaches 25,000 flight hours (FH)/flight cycles (FC) or
150 months (MO), it performs a second ‘C’ check, when it reaches
30,000 FH/FC or 180 MO, it performs a second ‘2C’ check, and so forth.
Fig. 2 shows the relative proportion of average workloads for
scheduled and unscheduled maintenance of ‘C’ checks, having the
average scheduled maintenance workload of the 5000 FH ‘C’ check as
reference (100%).
Regarding specifically unscheduled maintenance, Fig. 3 presents the
ratios between unscheduled and scheduled workloads of the considered
‘C’ checks. According to Fig. 3, the highest ratio between unscheduled
and scheduled workloads occurs in the 35,000 FH/FC or 210 MO ‘3C’
check, with a value of 198%. This means that for each man-hour of
scheduled maintenance spent, almost two man-hours of unscheduled
6
The OEM of the considered aircraft type differentiates between ‘normal
utilization’ aircraft, i.e. operated by airlines, and ‘low utilization’ aircraft, i.e.
governmental or private aircraft, and establishes specific maintenance re-
quirements for each.
The results presented in Section 4.1 confirm that the unscheduled
maintenance workload is an important problem faced by MROs and
that this problem tends to increase over the service life of aircraft.
Given its uncertainty, the dimension of the unscheduled maintenance
workload poses a significant threat to capacity planning and sche-
duling, and in a wider extent to budgeting, inventory management, and
the on-time completion of aircraft maintenance projects. It is important
to note that this problem is even greater in its extent as MROs typically
intervene several aircraft simultaneously.
Taking the uncertainty of aircraft maintenance work into account, in
particular of the unscheduled maintenance, which, just as Eickemeyer et al.
(2014b) mention, cannot be easily standardized, it has not been found in the
literature a method to qualitatively and quantitatively characterize the ex-
pected aircraft maintenance work from historical data. This supports the
remainder of this paper where a framework is proposed to support MROs in
the maintenance planning process.
5. FRamework for Aircraft Maintenance Estimation - FRAME
With the objective of providing MROs with a means to address ca-
pacity planning and scheduling problems, a framework is hereby pro-
posed. The framework, entitled FRamework for Aircraft Maintenance
Estimation (FRAME), consists of a set of requirements for the treatment
and recording of maintenance data, and a method to analyze such data,
the 3-Dimensional Maintenance Data Analysis (3D-MDA). The framework

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D. Dinis, et al. International Journal of Production Economics 218 (2019) 1–15

enables the qualitative characterization of the expected maintenance

work per aircraft zone, per maintenance work phase, and per work skill,
and allows its quantitative characterization through maintenance esti-
mation indicators.
Section 5.1 presents the requirements for the treatment and re-
cording of maintenance data, and Section 5.2 presents the proposed
method for data analysis.

5.1. Maintenance data treatment and recording

Important shortcomings were identified in the maintenance data

Fig. 3. Ratios between unscheduled and scheduled maintenance workloads for
‘C’ checks.
collected from the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system (Yen and
Sheu, 2004) of the MRO involved in the present work. The short-
comings prevented the use of the data for capacity planning and
scheduling as is, having thus to be comprehensively treated before
being analyzed. The performed treatment served as the basis for the
establishment of the maintenance data requirements regarding the

Fig. 4. Established classification scheme of maintenance events.

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D. Dinis, et al. International Journal of Production Economics 218 (2019) 1–15

Table 2 the same as those presented in Table 1 under ‘Check’, to each project
Considered aircraft work zones. that constituted a standard check, and to establish a classification to
Work Zone Description those that referred to other maintenance services. This was done to
classify each maintenance intervention unambiguously, allowing sub-
100 Lower Fuselage (External) sequent data characterization and analysis.
110 Forward Fuselage I (Radome, Nose Landing Gear and Fwd
Fig. 4 presents the classification scheme that was established for the
Electronic Compartments)
150 Main Landing Gear Compartment
maintenance interventions found in the collected dataset. At the top of
155–156 Wing Stub the classification scheme is the Maintenance Event, a denomination re-
190 Wing-to-Fuselage Attachment Fairing sulting from the fact that not every maintenance service provided by
200 Upper Fuselage (External) MROs is a check, i.e. a maintenance intervention mainly based on the
220 Forward Fuselage II (Cockpit Interior)
execution of scheduled inspection tasks. The Maintenance Event is di-
222 Cockpit (Access Panels)
230 Central Fuselage I (Galley) vided between Standard Maintenance Check, Non-Standard Maintenance
240 Central Fuselage II and III (Passenger Cabin) Check, and Other Services. A Standard Maintenance Check is a check
242 Access Panels (Galley, Passenger Cabin and Lavatory) composed of a maintenance package established by the OEM, identified
260 Central Fuselage IV (Lavatory)
by a letter for ‘normal utilization’ aircraft (Table 1), and by multiples of
270 Rear Fuselage I (Baggage Compartment and Aft Electronic
Compartment)
6 months (MO) for ‘low utilization’ aircraft in the case of the studied
300 Tail Cone and Empennage (External) aircraft type. A Non-Standard Maintenance Check is a check that is not
310 Rear Fuselage II (Tail Cone and APU) composed by a maintenance package established by the OEM, but is
320 Vertical Stabilizer and Rudders constituted mainly by inspection tasks. This classification results from
330 Horizontal Stabilizer
the fact that some maintenance projects in the dataset were composed
335–336 Elevators
400 Powerplant and Nacelles (External) mainly by inspection tasks, but not according to any ‘standard’ OEM
410 LH (#1) Power Plant (Engine, Nacelle, Pylon and Reverser) check. The purpose of establishing a specific classification for these
420 RH (#2) Power Plant (Engine, Nacelle, Pylon and Reverser) ‘non-standard’ checks is to eliminate the possibility of biasing sub-
500 LH Wing (External) sequent analysis, as proposed by the maintenance data analysis method
510 LH Wing Leading Edge
530 LH Wing Structure
presented in Section 5.2. Other Services refers to maintenance inter-
531 LH Wing Fuel Tank (Internal) ventions with a limited scope and a very specific purpose such as an
532 LH Main Landing Gear Compartment engine change, an aircraft painting, parking, or even documentation
560 LH Wing Tip management, material supply, among others.
570 LH Wing Trailing Edge, Flaps and Aileron
The established classification scheme, validated by the MRO com-
600 RH Wing (External)
610 RH Wing Leading Edge pany involved in this work, does not intend to be an exhaustive list of
630 RH Wing Structure maintenance events since other maintenance checks will succeed
631 RH Wing Fuel Tank (Internal) throughout the service life of the aircraft and other maintenance ser-
632 RH Main Landing Gear Compartment vices may be contracted. Instead, it depicts maintenance events that
660 RH Wing Tip
670 RH Wing Trailing Edge, Flaps and Aileron
occur within the scope of aircraft MRO activities. The classification
700 Main Landing Gear scheme can be used with other aircraft, by considering the applicable
710 Nose Landing Gear and Doors maintenance requirements, and its purpose is to systematize the re-
720 RH Main Landing Gear and Doors cording of the type of maintenance interventions for capacity planning.
730 LH Main Landing Gear and Doors
800 Doors
810 LH Main Door, Escape Hatch and Baggage Door 5.1.2. Aircraft work zones
820 RH Service Door and Escape Hatch The aircraft work zones specify where in the aircraft is the work
expected to be performed. According to the industry standard aircraft
zoning established by the ATA Specification 100 – Specification for
classification of: (1) maintenance events; (2) aircraft work zones; (3) Manufacturers' Technical Data (ATA, 1999), a three-level, three-digit
maintenance work phases; and (4) maintenance work skills. numbering system is used to divide aircraft into zones. This is done to
‘facilitate maintenance, planning, preparation of job instructions, lo-
5.1.1. Maintenance events cation of work areas and components, and a common basis for various
The first challenge in dealing with the collected data was to classify maintenance tasks’ (ATA, 1999). However, the standard aircraft zoning
the maintenance interventions coherently and unambiguously. Such is inefficient to be used in the characterization of the maintenance work
classification is of the utmost importance since, together with the air- for capacity planning and does not differentiate between internal and
craft type, the identification of maintenance intervention constitutes a external zones per se. These shortcomings demanded the definition of
fundamental variable for the characterization of the maintenance work. aircraft work zones, based, nonetheless, on the industry standard.
The type of maintenance intervention is defined in a free-text field in The objective of the aircraft work zones presented in Table 2, which
the ERP of the host MRO and it was found that most of the collected were validated by the MRO company involved in this work, is not to
projects were not classified by a ‘standard’ check such as those estab- replace the industry standard aircraft zoning. Instead, for the specific
lished by the OEM (Table 1). Many indicated more than one work purpose of capacity planning and scheduling, the considered work
package, like ‘Check A+2A + Weekly + Line + SBs’, or ‘Check zones are intended to provide an adequate level of detail for the char-
A+2A+3A+5A + 2500FC’, and others no work package at all, like acterization of the maintenance work, while minimizing the number of
‘Repairs + SBs’, or ‘Inspection’. The objective of treating the identifi- zones used in subsequent analysis to increase data manageability, and
cation of the maintenance interventions was to associate an OEM check, to differentiate between internal and external zones directly.

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D. Dinis, et al. International Journal of Production Economics 218 (2019) 1–15

Table 3 represented by the letter i, is defined by the 5 work skills presented in

Considered maintenance work phases. Table 4. Each coordinate represents an identifiable element, intended to
No. Work Phase Description be used for the qualitative and quantitative characterization of the
expected maintenance work with an adequate level of detail and
1 RECEPTION Aircraft reception. tractability. The matrix presented in Fig. 5 constitutes a template for the
2 OPENING/DISASSEMBLY Accesses opening and equipment
characterization of the maintenance work of each work skill i.
disassembly.
3 INSPECTION/EVALUATION Airframe, engines, systems and components
inspection and evaluation. 5.2.2. Maintenance estimation indicators
4 REPAIRS/MODIFICATIONS Repairs and modifications. The measurement of maintenance performance is a recurrent pro-
5 ASSEMBLY/CLOSING Equipment assembly and accesses closing.
blem in the literature (Löfsten, 2000; Muchiri et al., 2011; Van
6 DELIVERY Final testing for certification and aircraft
delivery. Horenbeek and Pintelon, 2014). Instead of maintenance performance
indicators, which measure the effectiveness and efficiency of performed
maintenance (Parida and Kumar 2009), this work proposes maintenance
estimation indicators (MEIs) to measure the potential impact of expected
maintenance.
5.1.3. Maintenance work phases In accordance with literature in the field (Márquez, 2007a) and with
Most of the aircraft maintenance interventions chronologically un- inputs provided by the host MRO, three categories of MEIs were es-
fold in a similar manner and their execution process is depicted in tablished, one for each of the most important maintenance resources to
papers such as that of Srinivasan et al. (2007), or Reményi and be planned: (1) workload; (2) spare parts and materials; and (3) costs.
Staudacher (2014). Such chronological order may be used to establish The MEIs were established by calculating metrics in the individual
work phases, which allow the maintenance work to be characterized projects and then aggregating them per maintenance event type
temporally within maintenance interventions. In this work, the con- (Fig. 4).
sidered maintenance work phases, which have been validated by the
host MRO and have generic applicability within the aircraft main- 5.2.2.1. Workload. An example of a MEI established for the workload
tenance industry, are presented in Table 3. category is the average workload in each of the space-time-skill
coordinates for each maintenance event type. The first analysis to
5.1.4. Maintenance work skills perform is to calculate, within each project p, the workloads of each
Aircraft maintenance technicians are licensed by aviation autho- maintenance task t referring to each of the defined space-time-skill
rities to perform only a certain type of tasks according to their technical coordinates according to equation (1). Similar calculations for each
skills, in a given aircraft type. In the collected dataset, 58 skills desig- project are possible for work zone totals, i.e. total workload for skill i
nations were initially found, some referring to the same technical skills. and zone j (without differentiating the phase), and work phase totals,
Redundant designations were replaced by current designations, in a i.e. total workload for skill i and phase k (without differentiating the
total of 35 unique maintenance skills. From these, 5 skills accounted for zone) (Fig. 5). For simplification purposes, only results for each of the
around 90% of the total workload in the dataset. The remainder 30 space-time-skill coordinates will be presented in this paper, excluding
skills were omitted from subsequent analysis in this study. The con- zone and phase totals.
sidered maintenance skills are presented in Table 4.
Wijkp = wijkt i , j, k, p
5.2. 3-Dimensional Maintenance Data Analysis – 3D-MDA t p (1)

where:
In addition to the maintenance data requirements, FRAME com-
prises a method for data analysis, entitled 3-Dimensional Maintenance
Wijkp – total workload for skill i in zone j and phase k in project p (in
Data Analysis (3D-MDA). The 3D-MDA consists in the definition of a
man-hours).
space-time-skill coordinate system and a set of maintenance estimation
wijkt – workload for skill i in zone j and phase k in maintenance task t
indicators for the characterization of maintenance work in aircraft.
(in man-hours).
5.2.1. Space-time-skill coordinate system
In addition to the analysis of individual work skills, an aggregated
The base of the 3D-MDA method is the definition of a space-time-skill
analysis of the workload of all considered skills, s, is possible to perform
coordinate system: (1) the space dimension, represented by the index
through equation (2).
letter j, is defined by the 42 considered aircraft work zones presented in
Table 2; (2) the time dimension, represented by the letter k, is defined s

by the 6 work phases presented in Table 3; and (3) the skill dimension, Wjkp = Wijkp j, k, p
i=1 (2)

Table 4 where:
Considered maintenance work skills.
No. Maintenance Skill Description Wjkp – total workload in zone j and phase k in project p (in man-
hours).
1 SYSTEMS Aircraft mechanical systems inspection and repair.
2 STRUCTURES Aircraft structures inspection and repair.
Then, as mentioned before, the calculated metrics of the individual
3 AVIONICS Aircraft avionics inspection and repair.
4 PAINTING Aircraft stripping and painting.
projects are aggregated according to the maintenance event type. As an
5 GENERIC Aircraft generic work. example, the average workload of each of the space-time-skill

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D. Dinis, et al. International Journal of Production Economics 218 (2019) 1–15

coordinates for each maintenance event type is calculated according to

equation (3).

p c
Wijkp
¯ijkc =
W i , j, k, c
Nc (3)

where:

W̄ijkc – average workload for skill i in zone j and phase k for main-
tenance event type c.
Nc – total number of projects of maintenance event type c.

Similarly to equation (2), the average total workload for all con- Fig. 5. Matrix for the maintenance work characterization of skill i.
sidered skills is calculated according to equation (4).
s
¯ jkc =
W ¯ ijkc
W j, k, c
(4) equation (6) for the 20,000 FH ‘4C’ maintenance check.
i=1

where: 5.2.2.2. Spare parts and materials. Examples of MEIs within the spare
parts and materials category include the average number of different
W̄jkc – average total workload in zone j and phase k for maintenance part numbers (PNs) requested, the quantities of spare parts applied and
event type c. materials consumed, the average lead time of each PN, and the
probability of occurrence of individual PNs, in each of the space-time-
As an example, Table 5 presents the average total workload in each skill coordinates. Again, after the calculation of the metrics in individual
of the space-time-skill coordinates, calculated with equation (4) for the projects, these can then aggregated per maintenance event type.
20,000 FH ‘4C’ maintenance check. In the interest of space, only ex- As an example, Table 7 presents the average number of different
cerpts of the obtained matrices are presented, from aircraft work zone PNs requested in each of the space-time-skill coordinates of the 20,000
100 through 300 (Table 2), and for confidentiality reasons, results are FH ‘4C’ check.
presented as intervals.
The aggregation of projects per maintenance event type allows the 5.2.2.3. Costs. The last category of MEIs refers to costs. Examples of
calculation of the probability of occurrence of work in each of the space- MEIs in this category includes average labor costs, and average spare
time-skill coordinates according to equation (5). parts and materials costs, in each of the space-time-skill coordinates per
nijkc maintenance check type.
Oijkc = i, j , k , c As an example, Table 8 presents the average spare parts and ma-
Nc (5)
terials costs in each of the space-time-skill coordinates of the 20,000 FH
where: ‘4C’ check, calculated similarly to the average total workload with
equation (4).
Oijkc – probability of occurrence of work for skill i in zone j and phase
k for event type c. 5.2.3. Risk analysis
nijkc – number of projects of event type c with work for skill i in zone In addition to the MEIs presented in the previous Sections, the 3D-
j and phase k. MDA enables risk assessments to be performed on the maintenance
Nc – total number of projects of maintenance event type c. work (Chemweno et al., 2015). In each of the categories presented
before – workload, spare parts and materials, and costs – risk events
The probability of occurrence of work without differentiating the may be defined. With the 3D-MDA, potential problematic space-time-
work skill can be calculated according to equation (6). skill coordinates may be identified early in the maintenance planning
njkc process, with practical implications in capacity planning and tasks
Ojkc = j, k , c scheduling, but also inventory management and budgeting. Risk is
Nc (6)
defined as a function of the probability of occurrence of a given event
where: and the impact (or consequence) of that same event (Garvey, 2008).
An example is presented considering the event as the occurrence of
Ojkc – probability of occurrence of work in zone j and phase k for maintenance work in each of the space-time-skill coordinates, the
event type c. probability of occurrence as the probability of performing work in each
njkc – number of projects with work in zone j and phase k of event of the coordinates, and the impact as the average workload that must be
type c. performed in each coordinate, measured in man-hours. Both the prob-
Nc – total number of projects of maintenance event type c. ability of occurrence and the workload impact scores were defined
through ordinal scales presented in Table 9 and Table 10, respectively.
As an example, Table 6 presents the probability of occurrence of The overall risk scores were defined through the risk matrix pre-
work in each of the space-time-skill coordinates, calculated with sented in Fig. 6, in which risk events are ordered in a strictly workload

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D. Dinis, et al. International Journal of Production Economics 218 (2019) 1–15

Table 5
Average total workload for the 20000 FH ‘4C’ check (Man-hours).
Zone\Phase 1 2 3 4 5 6

100 ]0, 34] [0, 0] ]0, 34] ]0, 34] ]0, 34] [0, 0]
110 [0, 0] ]0, 34] ]0, 34] ]34, 68] ]0, 34] [0, 0]
150 ]0, 34] ]0, 34] ]0, 34] ]0, 34] ]0, 34] [0, 0]
155–156 [0, 0] [0, 0] ]0, 34] ]0, 34] [0, 0] [0, 0]
190 ]0, 34] ]0, 34] ]34, 68] ]34, 68] ]0, 34] ]0, 34]
200 ]0, 34] ]0, 34] ]0, 34] ]0, 34] ]0, 34] [0, 0]
220 [0, 0] ]0, 34] ]102, 136] ]136, 170] ]0, 34] ]0, 34]
222 [0, 0] ]0, 34] ]0, 34] ]0, 34] ]0, 34] [0, 0]
230 [0, 0] ]0, 34] ]0, 34] ]136, 170] ]0, 34] [0, 0]
240 [0, 0] ]68, 102] ]0, 34] ]68, 102] ]0, 34] [0, 0]
242 [0, 0] ]0, 34] [0, 0] ]0, 34] ]0, 34] [0, 0]
260 [0, 0] ]0, 34] ]0, 34] ]34, 68] ]0, 34] [0, 0]
270 [0, 0] ]0, 34] ]34, 68] ]68, 102] ]0, 34] [0, 0]
300 ]0, 34] [0, 0] ]0, 34] ]0, 34] ]0, 34] [0, 0]

Table 6
Probability of occurrence of work for the 20000 FH ‘4C’ check.
Zone\Phase 1 2 3 4 5 6

100 ]40%, 60%] [0%, 0%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] ]0%, 20%] [0%, 0%]
110 [0%, 0%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] [0%, 0%]
150 ]40%, 60%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] ]20%, 40%] ]80%, 100%] [0%, 0%]
155–156 [0%, 0%] [0%, 0%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] [0%, 0%] [0%, 0%]
190 ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%]
200 ]40%, 60%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] [0%, 0%]
220 [0%, 0%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%]
222 [0%, 0%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] ]60%, 80%] ]80%, 100%] [0%, 0%]
230 [0%, 0%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] [0%, 0%]
240 [0%, 0%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] [0%, 0%]
242 [0%, 0%] ]80%, 100%] [0%, 0%] ]40%, 60%] ]80%, 100%] [0%, 0%]
260 [0%, 0%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] [0%, 0%]
270 [0%, 0%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] ]80%, 100%] [0%, 0%]
300 ]40%, 60%] [0%, 0%] ]0%, 20%] ]0%, 20%] ]0%, 20%] [0%, 0%]

impact averse manner, i.e. higher the workload impact score of a risk competitiveness and, therefore, these scores should be adjusted to
event, higher the overall risk score. In addition, a color-coded scheme better reflect the knowledge acquired by the company with the appli-
was adopted to visualize risk events according to their overall risk cation of the proposed framework and the attitude towards risk of the
score, in a total of five risk groups. Table 11 presents the definition of decision-maker (Garvey, 2008).
each risk group. Table 12 presents the overall risk scores obtained with the risk
Excessive risk aversion can affect organizational efficiency and matrix established in Fig. 6. The same risk scores are represented
through color-coded schematics of the aircraft work zones in Fig. 7. As
Table 7 explained, since the overall risk scores have been established in a
Average number of requested PNs in the 20000 FH ‘4C’ check. strictly workload impact averse manner, a high risk event is one that
Zone\Phase 1 2 3 4 5 6 has a high average workload proportionally to the maximum average
workload of all considered space-time-skill coordinates (Table 10).
100 0 0 1 8 1 0
110 0 0 5 12 1 0
5.2.4. Project network
150 1 0 1 1 3 0
155–156 0 0 1 4 0 0
As discussed in Section 3.4, by conceiving the space-time-skill co-
190 1 1 13 30 1 2 ordinates as jobs in analytical models, or as activities in project sche-
200 0 0 0 8 1 0 duling methods, the 3D-MDA enables the scheduling of the main-
220 0 0 4 32 2 2 tenance work taking into account physical space constraints,
222 0 0 0 3 1 0
precedence constraints, and resources availability constraints. This al-
230 0 0 1 54 1 0
240 0 0 1 39 1 0 lows the 3D-MDA to be applied considering the broader logistic sce-
242 0 0 0 4 0 0 nario and not only some aspects of the maintenance process at a time.
260 0 0 1 27 1 0 Fig. 8 presents a project network in which the nodes represent the
270 0 0 4 37 1 0
start of the work phases and the space-time-skill coordinates presented in
300 0 0 0 1 1 0

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D. Dinis, et al. International Journal of Production Economics 218 (2019) 1–15

Table 8
Average spare parts and materials costs in the 20000 FH ‘4C’ check (Euros).
Zone\Phase 1 2 3 4 5 6

100 [0, 0] [0, 0] ]0, 500] ]5000, 10,000] ]0, 500] [0, 0]
110 [0, 0] [0, 0] ]0, 500] ]500, 2500] ]0, 500] [0, 0]
150 ]0, 500] [0, 0] ]0, 500] ]0, 500] ]0, 500] [0, 0]
155–156 [0, 0] [0, 0] ]0, 500] ]0, 500] [0, 0] [0, 0]
190 ]0, 500] ]0, 500] ]500, 2500] ]2500, 5000] ]0, 500] ]500, 2500]
200 [0, 0] [0, 0] [0, 0] ]500, 2500] ]0, 500] [0, 0]
220 [0, 0] [0, 0] ]0, 500] ]2500, 5000] ]0, 500] ]0, 500]
222 [0, 0] [0, 0] [0, 0] ]0, 500] ]0, 500] [0, 0]
230 [0, 0] [0, 0] ]0, 500] ]2500, 5000] ]0, 500] [0, 0]
240 [0, 0] [0, 0] ]0, 500] ]5000, 10,000] ]0, 500] [0, 0]
242 [0, 0] [0, 0] [0, 0] ]0, 500] [0, 0] [0, 0]
260 [0, 0] [0, 0] ]0, 500] ]500, 2500] ]0, 500] [0, 0]
270 [0, 0] [0, 0] ]500, 2500] ]2500, 5000] ]0, 500] [0, 0]
300 [0, 0] [0, 0] [0, 0] ]0, 500] ]0, 500] [0, 0]

Table 9
Ordinal scale for probability of occurrence.
Score Definition

5 Probability of occurrence of work less than or equal to 1, but greater than 0.8.
4 Probability of occurrence of work less than or equal to 0.8, but greater than 0.6.
3 Probability of occurrence of work less than or equal to 0.6, but greater than 0.4.
2 Probability of occurrence of work less than or equal to 0.4, but greater than 0.2.
1 Probability of occurrence of work less than or equal to 0.2, but greater than or equal to 0.

Table 10
Ordinal scale for workload impact.
Score Definition

5 Workload of less than or equal to Max{W̄ijkc }, but greater than 0.8 Max{W̄ijkc }.
4 Workload of less than or equal to 0.8 Max{W̄ijkc }, but greater than 0.6 Max{W̄ijkc }.
3 Workload of less than or equal to 0.6 Max{W̄ijkc }, but greater than 0.4 Max{W̄ijkc }.
2 Workload of less than or equal to 0.4 Max{W̄ijkc }, but greater than 0.2 Max{W̄ijkc }.
1 Workload of less than or equal to 0.2 Max{W̄ijkc }, but greater than or equal to 0.

Table 11
Risk groups definition.

the previous Sections. Included in the space-time-skill nodes are values

for the average workloads, average number of different PNs requested,
average spare parts and materials costs, and probabilities of occurrence.

6. FRAME implementation procedure

Fig. 6. Considered risk matrix with overall risk scores. The integration of FRAME in the aircraft maintenance capacity

11
D. Dinis, et al.
Table 12
Overall risk scores for the 20000 FH ‘4C’ check.
planning process is presented in Fig. 9 and the steps for its im-
plementation are hereby described.
6.1. Data treatment and data recording
Historical data regarding past maintenance projects should be
treated according to the requirements established in 5.1: (1) main-
tenance events should be coherently and unambiguously classified
using the classification scheme proposed in Fig. 4, or equivalent; (2)
adequate aircraft work zones should be adopted such as those proposed
in Table 2, or equivalent; (3) work phases should be defined for the
maintenance events such as those proposed in Table 3, or equivalent;
and (4) work skills should be classified according to unique denomi-
nations such as those proposed in Table 4, or equivalent. In addition,
data regarding future maintenance projects should be recorded con-
sidering the same requirements as those used for the data treatment. By
doing so, one ensures that a comprehensive amount of data is available
for subsequent analysis.
6.2. 3-Dimensional Maintenance Data Analysis – 3D-MDA
The purpose and benefits of integrating the 3-Dimensional
Maintenance Data Analysis (3D-MDA) in the tactical and operational
phases of the capacity planning process are explained in the next
Sections.
6.2.1. Tactical phase
The 3D-MDA consists in the definition of a space-time-skill co-
ordinate system used to characterize the expected maintenance work,
scheduled and unscheduled, through MEIs calculated from past data.
Each coordinate represents an identifiable element, intended to be used
for maintenance planning and scheduling. A risk analysis is also pos-
sible to signal MROs of potential problematic space-time-skill combina-
tions. Furthermore, by characterizing the maintenance work through
identifiable elements, i.e. the space-time-skill coordinates, the 3D-MDA
allows a pre-scheduling of work, thus enabling better predictions re-
garding work dependencies, resources limitations, and the overall ma-
kespan of the maintenance events.
6.2.2. Operational phase
The tactical plans elaborated using the 3D-MDA are intended to
serve as the basis for the development of operational plans. To the best
of the authors knowledge, current tactical plans are used to estimate
maintenance workloads, but little input is given for operational plans.
These are developed somewhat from scratch when scheduled tasks are
known and the maintenance project is formalized, often not considering
the estimations made before. By using the 3D-MDA coordinates, the
tactical plans, which are intended to contain already a pre-scheduling
of maintenance work, should transit to the operational phase of the
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International Journal of Production Economics 218 (2019) 1–15
planning process.
7. Future research
Despite being based on a dataset referring to a single aircraft type,
data regarding maintenance events, aircraft zones, maintenance work
phases, and maintenance skills, are of standard use in aircraft main-
tenance. This fact allows the application of the 3D-MDA to other air-
craft, or even to other aeronautical products.7 Moreover, with due
adaptations, the method is expected to be applicable to other main-
tenance industries, or even to other activities that follow a repetitive
project logic (Bakry et al., 2014), by considering appropriate dimen-
sions for the problem.
As a future extension of the present work, and still in the aircraft
maintenance context, the 3D-MDA method can be used with GSEs8 and
tools data to characterize maintenance events more comprehensively.
GSEs and tools may be scarce resources during maintenance interven-
tions, especially if the MROs have multiple aircraft in the same work
phase simultaneously. Furthermore, a more comprehensive list of MEIs
should be developed to be used together with the 3D-MDA. Some in-
dicators have been presented in this paper as application examples,
such as the average workload, the average number of different PNs
requested, the average spare parts and materials costs, and the prob-
ability of occurrence of work. However, further studies should be per-
formed on maintenance estimation indicators to assess expected main-
tenance work for capacity planning and scheduling purposes, similarly
to the existing research on maintenance performance indicators
(Löfsten, 2000; Muchiri et al., 2011; Van Horenbeek and Pintelon,
2014). These examples constitute research opportunities to further as-
sess the applicability of the 3D-MDA, and in a broader scope of FRAME,
to other aspects of maintenance and potentially to other activities.
8. Conclusion
This paper is intended to address the maintenance capacity planning
and scheduling problems faced by MRO organizations. It presents a
quantitative assessment based on 372 aircraft maintenance projects
from a Portuguese MRO, in terms of workloads for the scheduled and
unscheduled maintenance, and proposes a framework for the qualita-
tive and quantitative characterization of the maintenance work with
the aim of supporting MRO organizations in the maintenance planning
process.
The performed assessment confirms that the uncertainty of the
maintenance work, resulting mainly from the unscheduled main-
tenance, is an important problem faced by aircraft MROs. Results show
that the unscheduled maintenance workload, which is inherently un-
certain, can reach as high as 198% of the scheduled workload. This
means that for each man-hour of scheduled maintenance spent, almost
two man-hours of unscheduled maintenance may be required. Results
also show that the ratio between unscheduled workloads and scheduled
workloads tends to increase over the service life of aircraft.
The proposed framework, entitled FRAME, establishes a set of re-
quirements for historical data treatment and future data recording, and
defines a method for data analysis. The data treatment and recording
requirements were defined to overcome important shortcomings iden-
tified in the collected data and refer to the definition of a classification
scheme for maintenance events, the definition of aircraft work zones,
the definition of maintenance work phases, and, finally, the definition
of maintenance work skills for data analysis. Additionally, a data
7
As defined in the Aeronautics Act, RSC 1985, c A-2 (R.S.C, 1985), an
aeronautical product is ‘any aircraft, aircraft engine, aircraft propeller or aircraft
appliance or part or the component parts of any of those things, including any
computer system and software’.
8
Ground Support Equipment, e.g. mobile generators.
D. Dinis, et al. International Journal of Production Economics 218 (2019) 1–15

Fig. 7. Overall risk scores for the 20000 FH ‘4C’ check: (a) 1-Reception; (b) 2-Opening/Disassembly; (c) 3-Inspection/Evaluation; (d) 4-Repairs/Modifications; (e) 5-
Assembly/Closing; and (f) 6-Delivery.

analysis method was developed, entitled 3D-MDA. The 3D-MDA con- aeronautical products, with due adaptations, the 3D-MDA is expected to
sists in a space-time-skill coordinate system that allows a qualitative and be applicable to other maintenance industries, or even to other activ-
quantitative characterization of the maintenance work early in the ities that follow a repetitive project logic.
planning process. Besides being applicable to other aircraft and

Fig. 8. Excerpt of the project network for the 20000 FH ‘4C’ check.

13
D. Dinis, et al.
Fig. 9. Integration of FRAME in the MRO planning process.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Portuguese National Science
Foundation (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia - FCT) under Grant
PD/BD/52345/2013.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.ijpe.2019.04.029.
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