The Perform Maintenance Engineering process consists of the following sub processes:
This sub process handles the activities required to
maintain a serial structure during its lifetime. This sub process also includes
activities to scrap or delete a serial.
Serials are replaced for various reasons, e.g., due to scheduled maintenance or
because of malfunction. The serial structure in the application must be updated
according to the changes done on the actual assembly. The system has several features to assist you in
making these changes.
When a serial has been removed from a structure, a decision must be made as to what should happen with the serial. This includes scrapping or repairing the serial.
A serial can be deleted if:
Even if a serial has been deleted from the application
it may still be possible to view historical data for the serial. This depends on the
options you select when deleting the serial.
All configuration rules for the serials are built into template structures and
these rules are validated when structure changes are reported. Configuration
rules control which part numbers are allowed where in a structure, the number of
components to be installed in a given position and interchangeability rules as
well as dependencies between parts in different positions.
This sub process handles investigation and processing
of structure mismatch entries. A structure change performed from a work order or shop order allows
you to report the installation of a component that is already installed somewhere
else in the serial structure in IFS/VIM or the removal of a component that is not
installed in the serial structure in IFS/VIM. This will cause the creation of a
structure mismatch log entry that you will first have to investigate the cause for
before you
decide whether something should be done or not, and then do the necessary
corrections to the structures.
When you are working directly against the serial structures in IFS/VIM you will
not have any structure mismatch log entries created, but instead error messages are
displayed.
This sub process handles analysis of historical data and data queries retained in IFS/VIM. Reliability analysis is important in many aspects such as identifying improvement areas for maintenance, need for modifying equipment to avoid repetitive failures, identifying rogue components etc.
Analysis is performed through the use of various capabilities such as reports, IALs, cubes and portlets.
This sub process is used to qualify requirements.
Requirements in this context can be, for example, service bulletins or service letters from manufacturers, airworthiness directives from authorities or change requests resulting from the reliability analysis internally.
All requirements should be registered as a Change Request (CR) and the evaluation of the requirements applicability driven from the CR. The evaluation process should be driven by the use of approval processes and status changes.
If the requirement is found to be not applicable to the organization, the CR should be canceled, otherwise it should be processed further and a Change Order (CO) created. A requirement is not applicable if the type of equipment it applies to is not used by the organization or if the proposed change has no financial or functional merit.
This sub process is used to define how the applicable CRs should be implemented.
After the CR has been activated, which equals approved, the CO is used to define the steps required to implement the change. The source of the CR and the type of change will determine the work required. For example, it could be that a service bulletin or airworthiness directive already has the required steps defined, and it is just a question of entering these into the application, while for an internal engineering order it may be required to perform a complete engineering process to define the necessary steps. Sometimes it is enough to update documentation or data in the system, at other times physical work is required.
When the steps have been defined and approved, a modification in IFS/VIM will typically be created to manage the actual implementation of the changes on the fleet.
This sub process is used to manage maintenance planning documents and maintenance review board reports. This process is very much a manual process, i.e., the process is not entirely supported by IFS Applications.
These documents contain maintenance requirements as they are defined by the authorities or manufacturers and all these requirements must be evaluated and organized based on applicability, frequency and so on, as well as be adopted to the maintenance organizations procedures before they are used in production.
When the maintenance requirements have been through the necessary process, they form the maintenance program for the fleet and this program is then loaded into the application.
Once the maintenance program is entered in the application, pending tasks will be generated and these can then be planned for execution through maintenance orders.