Leveraging quality function deployment to enhance the productivity of an aviation maintenance repair and overhaul organization

An airplane has an economic life of about thirty years in service. In order to keep the aircraft operationally available throughout this period, the Aviation industry follows a very stringent maintenance program. With the technology and intricacy in aircraft systems growing, there is a rising trend in Aviation industry to outsource complex maintenance tasks such as overhauling of the aircraft to Aviation Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul Organizations (MROs). Time to delivery and higher standards of service are the established business imperatives in Aerospace maintenance. The higher quality of maintenance service mainly depends on how well the customer requirements are captured at the planning stage prior to service delivery. This research is focused on QFD based matrix planning to transform customer needs into desired service quality features. The importance rating for each engineering characteristic is obtained as guidelines for aircraft maintenance.