TITLE:
A Comparative Study of Managing a Project Using Traditional Management Techniques and a Critical Chain Project Management Methodology in Aircraft Maintenance Field
AUTHORS:
Devinder Kumar Yadav, Anand Kulkarni, Hui Yao
KEYWORDS:
Aviation, Airline, Aircraft, Engineering, Management, Maintenance, Operations, Planning, Project
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Transportation Technologies,
Vol.12 No.4,
August
16,
2022
ABSTRACT: Aircraft on ground or down-time for its maintenance
is a clear loss in revenue for an airline operation. With never ending
competition and growing operating costs
of aircraft, airlines continuously need to explore opportunities to reduce the
aircraft down-time in order to remain sustainable. Due to round the
clock operation feature of scheduled airlines, aircraft maintenance operations are generally carried out using traditional
management methodologies instead of considering it as a project. Though
aircraft heavy maintenance checks consist of several major tasks that can last
from few weeks to a year, the maintenance organisations do not adopt modern
project management methodologies. Therefore, this paper models a heavy
maintenance check of an Airbus aircraft as a
typical project and adopts contemporary project management methodology to explore the possibility
of reducing the downtime. To this end,
a case study has been done at an aircraft maintenance company to analyse the
potential of this project management method in aircraft maintenance industry.