September 20189 CHALLENGES IN MANAGING AIRCRAFT AND BUS FLEETAN EFFECTIVE FLEET MANAGEMENT SYSTEM SHOULD ENABLE A COMPANY TO SUCCEED IN REACHING ITS OBJECTIVES, NOT DEFINING WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE FOR THEM BASED ON GENERIC PRINCIPLESindividual buses within minutes to minimise impact on the travelling public would give a real competitive advantage in a very low profit margin industry. Telematics systems on individual buses (micro level) collecting bus performance and usage data, combined with maintenance and condition data, feeding into an holistic asset management system for the fleet (macro level) is one way of achieving this.Operating an aircraft fleet has its own challenges. Flying at high speed, low to the ground and in harsh and hostile environments creates a huge range of fleet management issues: usage and condition monitoring, parts obsolescence, maintaining an appropriate maintenance stagger, avoiding repetitive flight profiles and managing the maintenance policy of individual configuration items, to name just a few. It is this last point that keeps fleet and maintenance planners on their toes. Maintenance of components could be based on `time since first installed', `airframe hours', `calendar days', `shelf life', or a combination of these acting concurrently. A fleet management system must be able to adequately handle these possibilities as an over-fly could be catastrophic. Other challenges include: · Digital technology provides a number of benefits over paper-based publications, but the downside is that hyperlinks and attachments can increase complexity for users.· No matter how good the fleet management software is, to get the real benefits fleet managers need to be trained in applying contemporary maintenance planning and scheduling techniques. · Having the ability to conduct detailed analysis and run scenarios will enable determination of the best maintenance policy structure that reduces the maintenance burden while increasing periods of operation.· An integrated resource planning tool for the identification and management of resources available and required. For example, manpower, parts, support and test equipment, tools, etc, over geographically dispersed locations, often for short periods of time.· Even where fleet management software exists, there is often a large array of software tools, spreadsheets and philosophies that are not aligned or integrated. Is this because the software is inadequate, or that there are a number of organisational behaviour/change management aspects hindering its uptake?One final point: I have heard it said that managing the fleet must conform to the logic of the software. While I understand the reason for that, if the software has not allowed for dealing with the complexities of certain industries, then I believe it will always sub-optimise the outcome.So, after reading the above you may conclude that I used different words to express similar challenges for managing both aircraft and bus fleet. I would have to agree. As I said at the start, bus and aircraft fleets both require systems to manage operations, maintenance and engineering. So it should be no surprise. And secondly, each industry has its own language. If you are providing a service to an industry, you need to understand its language, it pain points and what success looks like. An effective fleet management system should enable a company to succeed in reaching its objectives, not defining what success looks like for them based on generic principles. Scott White
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