The developement and optimisation of an inventory model for unscheduled maintenance on aircraft

Abstract

Naturelink Aviation is involved in Private Air Charters, Aircraft Leasing, Aircraft Sales, In- house Training and Maintenance. The company has a fleet of eleven Embraer EMB120 and six PAC P750XL aircraft contracted in services across Africa. Naturelink Aviation seeks improvement regarding the management of inventory for unscheduled maintenance at outstations in Africa. It was established that the company does not have an automated inventory systems for the outstations, mainly because outstations are dependent on contracts. Currently the engineer at the outstation has to manage the unscheduled maintenance inventory and determine when top-up stock needs to be ordered. The decision was made to develop a multiproduct Economic Order Quantity model to determine optimal order quantities, number of cycles and order times. The main objective is to determine when items of different frequency usage can be ordered together instead of sending orders only days apart. After this project it was clear that reorder points often coincide or happen close together in addition to the crew rotation schedule. This information enabled the development of a sample reorder schedule, it requires constant updated and verifications, because reorder points and EOQs may change. Naturelink Aviation will now test the schedule and if needed rectifications and adjustments will be made before the final distribution and implementation among the fleet.