Like many other people, I find air travel fascinating. In addition, flying in an aircraft is is the safest mode of travel on earth, largely due to the fact that the aerospace industry is highly regulated and where the airline maintenance program (AMP) defines the maintenance requirements for a fleet of aircraft. Aircraft operators must ensure compliance against AMP.
Challenges for aircraft operators include limited hangar space and availability of authorized technicians. SAP Enhanced Maintenance & Service Planning (EMSP) enables long- term planning of aircraft maintenance by aircraft operators, ensuring maximum aircraft utilization.
There are two ways an aircraft operator can use theEMPS solution from SAP:
1. Maintenance planning using SAP SCM only
2. Both maintenance planning and execution using SAP SCM and SAP ERP
The following picture explains the EMSP business scenario with integration to SAP ERP:
(Note: The planning data from the SAP SCM system is also available in SAP BI for reporting)
An aircraft is modeled as a functional location and engines and landing gear are normally modeled as an Equipment item in the SAP ERP system. The maintenance plan is created to fulfill the AMP for the aircraft. All of this data can be transferred from SAP ERP to SAP SCM using CIF (Core Interface) technology. However, if you are using only SAP SCM for planning, then you can create the SAP SCM objects directly without having any link to SAP ERP system.
Once the aircraft is modeled and the maintenance plans created, SAP SCM provides an interactive planning board to plan and make manual alterations to the plan. Many planners currently perform this activity in chart papers, and thus the EMSP planning board provides significant benefit. Once planning is done in SAP SCM, the data can be sent back to SAP ERP using CIF, for execution in the form of notifications and revisions. EMSP simplifies long-term planning of aircraft maintenance and enables airline operators plan more effectively, with the following specific benefits:
- Increase aircraft utilization
- Identify unused hangar space to acquire new business
- Identify bottleneck situations
- Increase the aircraft availability
- Perform what-if analysis
Note: Also EMSP can be used for other complex assets that needs a maintenance facility for the work to be done, like the navy submarines, ships, locomotives, heavy earth moving equipment, etc.
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