Aircraft Maintenance Planning
Consulting, support and further development for the software system of a major German airline that produces all maintenance plans for its fleet – a Unix application on HP-UX with an Oracle database and an X/Motif user interface. This included coordinating an offshore development team in Dubai.
Period: 2001 – 2002 · Client: major German airline · Industry: aviation
Challenge
Every aircraft must be maintained at defined intervals – depending on flight hours, takeoffs and landings or calendar periods, among other things. The system supports planning and processing these maintenance events for the entire fleet and was developed further in terms of functionality. What matters for maintenance planning: no deadline may be missed, and the plans must be compatible with flight operations.
The technical challenges behind it:
- Binding deadlines: Maintenance intervals are mandatory and apply to every single aircraft. Missed deadlines can cause considerable additional costs.
- Planning for the whole fleet: The plans cover many aircraft with different maintenance requirements and draw on extensive data in the Oracle database.
- Further development in production: New functional requirements are incorporated into a system in productive use without jeopardizing ongoing maintenance planning.
- Changing equipment: Management of modular components such as C-Class kits (business class seats; installed and removed as needed).
Role and Implementation
IT Consultant
2001 – 2002 · Further development of the system
- Consulting and planning for the software system
- Coordination of the offshore development team in Dubai
- Customer support for problems; initial assessment and assignment of tasks
- Further development of the system, for example C-Class kits
Technologies
- C
- C++
- Oracle DB
- SQL
- HP-UX
- X/Motif