A simulation study on maintainer resource utilization of a fast jet aircraft maintenance line under availability contract
Introduction
Performance-based contracting is replacing service procurement practices. Customers are now focusing on “what” is required in terms of equipment operations rather than “how” a facility (a spare/repair action) is to be delivered according to set technical specifications [1]. Availability based contracting, a variant of performance-based contracting, is increasingly being used in the UK defence equipment service procurement. An availability based contract is a type contract in which the end customer contracts out through-life support of equipment based on availability levels, as opposed to the traditional model where assets and services are purchased on demand (http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/). These contracts entail man-power utilization problems like low utilization levels in a gang of operators, availability issues related to customer (government) furnished resources, best mix of operators to ensure desired equipment availability. These types of service and support contracts can be managed efficiently with a proper assessment of the resource requirements. The academic literature provides very little guidance with respect to how the manpower resources for such contracts should be utilized to achieve desired outcomes specified in the contracts. This paper aims at filling this gap by reporting the ways to improve levels of utilization of maintenance manpower for given levels of performance on availability type contract in UK defence industry in the context of fast jet aircraft maintenance line. This paper reports a discrete event based simulation approach to study the manpower utilization in availability-based contracts and assess the manpower requirements for delivering certain performance requirements.
The paper first discusses a structured review of different resource modelling methods used across different sectors as manufacturing, healthcare systems, software industry, ecological systems and defence. Next the problem is described and the simulation methodology including assumptions, data requirements and collection are discussed. An insight is gained into current method of assessing manpower requirements at bidding stage through interactive workshops. This serves as a conceptual base to develop a representative simulation model for maintenance line. Finally the findings and discussions section show the results of multiple experiments run with different utilization issues for effective operation of performance based contracts. The contribution of this study lies in the application of simulation to provide insights to decisions to improve the manpower utilization under multiple situations and evaluate the impact on the performance. Such simulation model helps service providers evaluate multiple decisions during contract design, delivery and adaptation. It makes customers understand the importance of providing their resources to improve the performance of the contracts.
Section snippets
Literature review
As industrial products are more advanced and complex, the role of supporting services needed to maintain a products’ function to an agreeable performance is becoming increasingly important. The performance-based contracting tends to focus on achieving a required outcome rather than a contract for the supply of a set of prescribed specifications [1]. Thus, the buyer purchases the result of product use (utilization of service or performance outcomes) not ownership of the product. Such
Current practice of assessing maintainer resources and needs for improvement
This research studies the availability contract under which fast jet aircraft maintenance activities are carried out by one prime contractor to UK Ministry of Defence (MoD). Under CfA, the contractor needs to maintain an acceptable number of “Forwarded available Fleet (FAF)” as availability. The company has to manage spares supply and also provide technical support staff. The spare and asset management is not considered during research. The company offers to provide the maintenance, repair and
Methodology: building the simulation model
This section contains basic model assumptions, general data considerations and model implementation. We propose to use ‘Witness’, an established dynamic process simulation tool for the research (www.lanner.com). It enables easy model creation, is comprehensible to read, analyse and debug and is used in many production environments due to good planning, scheduling and support to a variety of data links (spreadsheet, database or CAD). It allows choosing machine, buffers, parts and operator from
Experimentation to test different manpower resource utilization decisions
The simulation is run with the number of operators obtained from the project data document. Multiple decision scenarios are analysed in terms of individual percentage utilization of operators. There are 28 types of operators as indicated in Table 2 for different pulse lines for different parts (p denoting aircraft main body, f denoting fuselage, w denoting wings, r denoting rebuild and jro denote joint repair organization). Each of these lines has quite large numbers of operators except jro
Conclusion
In order to improve utilization of manpower requirement in performance-based availability contracts, this research develops a discrete-event simulation model represent an end-to-end repair line for jet aircrafts to evaluate multiple decision scenarios. The research carries out a comparison of tools and techniques used for resource modelling in various sectors. We found lack of research in contemporary literature addressing resource modelling for long-term performance-based contracts. The
Acknowledgments
This research reported here is jointly funded by British Aerospace Systems Plc and Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) and conducted as part of the Support Service Solutions: Strategy and Transition (S4T) project consortium led by University of Cambridge.
Partha Priya Datta is an Associate Professor of Operations Management at Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta. He received BTech (Hons) in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, MBA from Lancaster University and PhD in management from Cranfield School of Management. He has published in Production Planning & Control: The Management of Operations, International Journal of Operations and Production Management and International Journal of Production
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Partha Priya Datta is an Associate Professor of Operations Management at Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta. He received BTech (Hons) in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur, MBA from Lancaster University and PhD in management from Cranfield School of Management. He has published in Production Planning & Control: The Management of Operations, International Journal of Operations and Production Management and International Journal of Production Research. His research interests include operations and supply chain management, operations strategy and modelling and analysis of production systems.
Mr. Anupam Srivastava is currently working as a manager of Aircraft Structural Assembly complex at M/s Hindustan Aeronautics limited, Nashik in India. After completing his graduation (B.Tech) in Production engineering from NIT Calicut (1997-01), he joined M/s H.A.L (Ministry of Defence, India) and subsequently completed his Masters from Cranfield University U.K. (2008–2009) in ‘Engineering and Management of manufacturing systems’ (EMMS) discipline. He has also coauthored a publication titled “Six Sigma: a review of literature review” published on International Journal of Lean Six Sigma 1 (3) 2010, based on his Group Project on DFSS principles application on production lines design carried out for Ford UK-Dunton.
Rajkumar Roy is a Professor of Competitive Design, Head of Manufacturing Department and Director of the EPSRC centre for innovative manufacturing in Through Life Engineering Services at Cranfield University. He has published 58 journal papers and over 120 conference papers. He is the Principal Investigator of four Product-Service System (PSS) and cost engineering (IMRC, EPSRC, Industry and MoD funded) in the areas of concept design, whole life cost modelling, design for service and obsolescence management. He has developed an innovative PSS Futures Lab at Cranfield. He is also the Editor in Chief of the Applied Soft Computing Journal. He is one of the editors of the Journal of Engineering Design, Concurrent Engineering Research and Applications. He is a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of the International Academy for Production Engineers (CIRP), IED, Association of Cost Engineers (ACostE) and is a member of IEEE and Institution of Engineers (India). His research interests include real-life design and service optimization, identifying and modelling uncertainties in through-life cost estimates.