According to Henry Canaday, writing in AviationWeek (MROs Race to Speed TAT), "The most important factors in an airline's selection of an airframe maintenance firm typically are quality, turnaround time (TAT) and price, in that order. Airlines usually rank TAT ahead of price because it can cost $10,000 a day to lease a narrowbody for each day of planned TAT, and several times that for a widebody, according to maintenance consultants at Oliver Wyman. Unplanned TAT delays cost even more in revenue losses."

This supports what Enigma has been saying for years, regardless of your industry when it comes to maximizing uptime and minimizing costs, maintenance quality and speed is critical. It's almost embarrassing to write something so obvious; however, what isn't so obvious is one of the key factors for improving quality and speed of service.

Maintenance consistency is a major driver for both quality and speed. In fact, lean six-sigma (LSS) shows that increasing maintenance consistency has a bigger impact on service cost than reducing mean-time-to-repair (MTTR). (You can look here and here for why that is.) In other words, when looking at the big picture, MTTR shouldn't be your primary concern.

Since quality and speed are not mutually exclusive, achieving both should be the goal—and service consistency drives both. Because Enigma's technology focuses on efficiency and consistency, we have been helping companies provide better, faster maintenance for years serving: airlines, MROs, automotive and industrial manufacturers and their dealers, rail and transit, and others.

Canaday writes, "KLM Engineering & Maintenance now leads the EU market in TAT for the 747-400, according to VP Base Maintenance Karel Bockstael. ‘We have to, to compete with Asia on labor cost.' D-check TAT on 747-400s [a complex maintenance event] can be as brief as four weeks, or 3.5 weeks without exterior painting. This represents a 30% reduction in five years through Lean and Six Sigma, identification of critical paths and other improvements, with no increase in manpower."

Interestingly, KLM went live with Enigma about five years ago. While we can't take credit for all of the savings—that would be unfair to KLM Engineering & Maintenance—Enigma's technology has contributed to their success. 

At the dawn of this new decade, perhaps it's time for a fresh look at how your company supports and services equipment. When it comes to succeeding in the aftermarket, Enigma has the technology and the experience to help you fix it right and fix it fast.