STAFF SCHEDULING FOR LINE AND BASE MAINTENANCE OPERATIONS

Planning maintenance staff and resources is a complex task. In line maintenance, not all workload can be estimated in advance and in base maintenance, space, skilled staff and equipment are limited resources. A maintenance operator’s profitability depends on how well they balance their resources with the actual work to carry out, while facing the unpredictability of airline operations. Today, both airline and independent MRO organizations compete to offer their line maintenance services. Those who achieve a high level of reliability, quality and productivity will benefit greatly from this growing market.

The timely maintenance of the aircraft fleet is one of the most important criteria for the success of an airline. Passengers expect a safe and on-time flight operation. In order to achieve these expectations, airlines must efficiently plan and schedule aircraft maintenance resources. Challenges such as delayed flights, unknown technical problems, an ever-changing workload and deferred maintenance repairs, make the workforce management in the field of line and base maintenance a complex but essential task.

GroundStar addresses these challenges and provides a system that supports the dispatcher from the planning stage to the assignment of all operations. The real-time scheduling system results in a complete overview of all planned tasks for the day, employees and the corresponding allocation of the aircraft. As operational irregularities evolve, the tool will automatically update aircraft arrival and departure times, aircraft positions and task progress followed by tasks being automatically updated, optimized and reassigned. Through the use of INFORM’s optimizer which reacts to any changes in the plan, the dispatcher can easily focus on situations that require special attention.