Electronic Maintenance Management

[Texas]

Does anyone have any views on Maintenance Management Systems, with particular reference to Electronic Systems, I hear the MoD are going for it big time but are having a bit of trouble getting it to work

[The Invisible Man]

We have a Maintence Management System in our company. I dont work at the main base but we as engineers have to imput data from tech logs into the system, record all part numbers, and demand replacements for bits used. For the first few years it was a massive pain in the rear end, trebling the time spent on doing a job. 10mins for the job, 30 mins for the paperwork. With experience it is now just a pain !! It is supposed to be fully accountable, but things are missed off and not recorded. I dont think we bought the Rolls Royce of systems and it shows. If Jetfueldrinker reads this he may have more info than I.
T.I.Man

[jetfueldrinker]

I work for the same company as the Transparent one, but at Base. Electronic Management systems suck and should be scrapped NOW. They are very restrictiveand you can sometimes wait for 20 minutes looking at an egg timer. Give me good old pen and paper any day. One thing though, the workforce has incerased to cope with the shortcomings of the system. Not on the hangar floor I may add, but in the offices. Don't ask me what they all do up there all day, but they always look busy!

[The Invisible Man]

Changed a Pax seat control unit when we first got the sytem installed, job took 10 mins, was on the "system " for a hour and a half waiting for the egg timer to disappear. One hour of that was overtime!!!

[Lu Zuckerman]

To: Texas

I may be going on a consulting contract working for a US Major to either modify the existing maintenance management system or create a new one. If it turns out that I am charged to create a new system it will be exactly like the systems used by the auto manufacturers. They have total control on every single job performed, the parts consumed, and the hours worked. I believe that they dump all of the jobs worked into memory and it is dumped into the central computer late at night.

I think the mechanic must be accountable for filling out the paperwork but not be responsible to input each job and wait until he can press the go button on his computer station.

I also believe that the work record should be input using some type of relational database with simple on screen formatting. The information on the database would then be sent to the main computer with no waiting on the part of the mechanic.


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The Cat

[Jango]

This is always a bone of contention. My commisserations to JFD and TIM, but sounds like you have crap hardware trying to work an old software = frustrations. I have installed and worked with good and bad, the fancier you want these things to look, generally the slower they get.

Shannon Aerospace took a long time to get their system up but once we had the system right and engineers conditioned to using it, they generally preferred it to scribing.

Line wise, I have worked at airlines who have live systems and as long as the input screens are kept simple, guys can get on with it. We used to keep the tech log page and the data entry screen the same format, but in many places they had a tech clerk to update it rather than waste an engineer's time/money. These linked systems that will not allow stores to send bits out until hours and **** updated are a good safety net, but can be hellish to work with

One set up in Brunei, not the national airline, was looking at a complete electronic tech log system...now that would be open to all kinds of abuse (chapter 99 being the most popular ata)

There are so many systems out there now, CX had a frigging committee looking at which one to buy (jollies for the boys more like). At the end of the day if you are trying run the system of your fading 286, youre gonna have problems.


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Old age and treachery will always triumph over youth and enthusiasm.

[This message has been edited by Jango (edited 05 February 2001).]