IFS/Complex Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (IFS/Complex Assembly MRO) covers a wide array of activities, from minor service requests for vehicles and machinery to complex overhauls—for example, Aircraft engines—that require an advanced-technology infrastructure and a highly skilled workforce.
The goal of the IFS/Complex Assembly MRO business solution is to support maintenance for complex equipment and machinery, such as main aircraft engines and auxiliary power units (APUs). Such maintenance is typically performed on a regular basis in overhaul shops, but single Shop Visits are not uncommon either. The unique combination of extensive tracking mechanisms and enforcement of configuration rules, make it possible to offer extensive system support for service providers that specialize in complex service programs, and hence require high transparency and reliability throughout the process.
The IFS/Complex Assembly MRO business solution typically revolves around the maintenance of complex equipment such as main aircraft engines and APUs. This business solution can be defined by the following characteristics:
IFS/Applications provide tools for managing all of these activities, and thus provides a complete solution for the component IFS/Complex Assembly MRO. The solution integrates various IFS/Applications components—IFS/Maintenance, IFS/Vehicle Information Management (IFS/VIM), IFS/Engineering, IFS/Manufacturing, and IFS/Distribution—and supports the following key areas:
Following is a list of key terms and concepts used within the context of the IFS/Complex Assembly MRO business solution.
Shop Visit—Designates a shop visit for a specific overhaul object. The visit refers to the period of time when the object is at the service provider's location for maintenance or overhaul. It extends from the inventory receipt of the object to its return shipment to the customer. Each visit is unique in terms of workscope and agreement conditions, and a work order is generated to document the visit. The work order also captures all costs and is used for both pricing and invoicing.
Visit Defaults/Baselines—When a MRO Shop Visit is set up, it is possible to define visit defaults and baselines. Visit defaults are used when a preliminary workscope for a shop visit is calculated. Baselines are defined in terms of maintenance levels and modifications as well as the remaining release life for life-limited parts. Visit defaults and baselines are specified for each unique combination of customer and overhaul object (part number).
Position Part—A position part is a fictitious part number used to group real part numbers that are interchangeable. Usually, Service Bulletins (SBs) and manuals are issued per position part, not per real part number. Likewise, the workscope refers to position parts. When the actual maintenance work begins, the position parts are gradually replaced by the real part numbers found during the disassembly of the overhaul object.
Template Structure—A template for a serial structure. It holds all the configuration rules related to a specific product or model of a part.
Serial Structure—The actual serial structure of an overhaul object. It is created by copying the template and then adding the actual serial numbers to the new structure.
Template Part No—The number that identifies a template serial structure in the system.
Top Template Part No—The number of the top part in the template serial structure.
Top Part No—The number of the top part in the actual serial structure.
Prime Part—The preferred part in the template serial structure. It can have one or several valid alternate parts defined in the template. When a template serial structure is copied to an actual serial structure in IFS/VIM, this part gets copied by default.
Maintenance Level—A set of operations for a given part in the disassembly or assembly structure.
Modification—Services that need to be performed for a specific object, typically those defined by Service Bulletins (SBs) or Airworthiness Directives (ADs). During the definition of the workscope, modifications are transformed into repair shop orders.
Life-Limited Part—A part that has a predefined life span, defined in engine hours, calendar days, or any other so called operational parameter. It is possible to indicate whether an engineering part is tracked by the life limit. The life limit needs to be considered before an overhauled object is returned to the customer, since the service provider usually needs to guarantee a minimum remaining life after the overhaul is completed. During the workscope definition, life-limited parts appear as Affected Parts.
Work Scope—The formal and comprehensive summary of all maintenance levels, modifications, and affected parts that are to be handled during a specific shop visit.
Disassembly Product Structure—A monolithic service structure created when the template serial structure is transferred from IFS/Vehicle Information Management (IFS/VIM) to IFS/Manufacturing. It is represented as an ordinary product structure but with structure type Disassembly. It contains all possible parts and their alternates. The disassembly structure reflects the order in which the overhaul object is to be disassembled and which parts are to be received at each level.
Disassembly Routing Structure—The corresponding monolithic structure for the routings and operations used during disassembly. This structure is not transferred from IFS/Vehicle Information Management but set up directly in IFS/Manufacturing Standards.
Disassembly Order Structure—The order structure that is created as a subset of the monolithic disassembly structure, based on the maintenance levels that were selected during workscope definition. At the bottom, the disposition order is displayed.
Assembly Product Structure—A monolithic service structure created when the template serial structure is transferred from IFS/VIM. It is represented as an ordinary product structure but with the structure type Assembly. The assembly product structure is created as a mirror of the disassembly structure and contains all the possible parts as well as their alternates. The assembly product structure indicates the order in which the overhaul object is to be assembled and which parts are to be received at each level.
Assembly Routing Structure—The corresponding monolithic structure for the routings and operations used during assembly. This structure is not transferred from IFS/VIM but is set up directly in IFS/Manufacturing Standards.
Assembly Order Structure—A mirror of the disassembly order structure. At the bottom of the assembly order structure, all repair orders generated during disposition will be shown.
Disposition Order—A shop order used for the disposition of a removed part. During disposition, each part is examined, disposition results are logged, and proper actions are determined. The part could be put back into inventory for reuse, scrapped, shipped to an external service provider for repair, or handled with an internal repair shop order. If unforeseen problems are discovered, the disposition may also result in an extension of the workscope.
Repair Product Structure—The product structure used when disassembled parts are repaired. It contains any parts needed in addition to the repair object itself.
Repair Routing—The monolithic routing structure reflecting all possible routings and operations for repairing a part.
Repair Codes—Repair codes are defined as a sub-set of the repair routings, in a similar way as maintenance levels are defined as sub-sets of monolithic product structures. Both modifications and discrepancy codes are linked to the repair codes, enabling automatic creation of operations on the repair shop orders generated during disposition.
Task Sign Off—The process of approving the respective tasks identified in a given work scope. By approving the tasks, the engineer indicates that all the necessary work has been performed to comply with the modification (e.g., a service bulletin).
Conformance Check—The check that is performed after final assembly, ensuring that all the configuration rules have been followed, that parts with remaining life have been used, and that agreed-upon modifications have been completed. Divergence from these rules and regulations will be presented as a warning in a conformance log. Log items with warnings can be approved, meaning that the engineer takes full responsibility for overriding the rules.
IFS/Complex Assembly MRO combines several main processes. However, before any of these processes can be started and a Shop Visit can take place, a substantial amount of basic data needs to be set up. This basic data setup is performed within various IFS/Applications components: IFS/VIM, IFS/Engineering, IFS/Manufacturing, IFS/Maintenance, and IFS/Distribution. The sample model MRO Shop Visit Preparations described below, serves as an illustration.
The Shop Visit Preparations sample model, handles everything from creating engineering parts and modifications, constructing serial templates, and adding configuration rules to transferring the templates and modifications to IFS/Manufacturing Standards. Once that is done, the disassembly, disposition, and assembly structures as well as routings are defined, as are maintenance levels, repair codes, disposition codes, and discrepancy codes. During the transfer, position parts and inventory parts are created automatically. Details of these processes can be found within the following process models:
All these preparation steps are necessary because the configuration management feature resides in IFS/VIM while the execution of the actual work is performed within IFS/Manufacturing through the use of shop orders. During the execution, feedback is continuously sent back to IFS/VIM, ensuring that rules and restrictions are followed.
A central part of preparing for a Shop Visit, is to set up a Complex Assembly MRO Contract to capture all customer-specific requirements. A special agreement is available for service providers who need to handle contract pricing in their business. The contract offers support for:
The structure and cost type–based pricing is enabled by a user-defined setup, which determines the cost type of all the transactions copied to the work order from the shop orders during execution. When the contract is applied to the product structure, prices per cost type are derived by accumulating the transactions per cost type. This accumulation can be performed over and over again during execution, thus providing a powerful tool for simulating and monitoring the cost and price development throughout the Shop Visit. The following cost type categories are available:
Note: Since a contract is based on the disassembly structure, it cannot be fully completed until the transfer of the structure from IFS/VIM has occurred.
This is the first main process sample model. It comprises of all the activities necessary for defining the contents of a MRO Shop Visit with a customer. The important steps in this process are:
When a MRO Shop Visit is due, either by terms of an agreement or by a customer request, the Shop Visit window offers a useful starting point. Showing all documents related to previous visits, it provides the service provider and customer a total view of the said customer's business to-date. Visit defaults and baselines can be entered or updated in the window. From here, it is also easy to create the visit-specific work order and subsequently retrieve the necessary receipt order (for receiving the overhaul object into the shop) and dispatch order (for shipping the object back to the customer).
In a process running parallel to the MRO Shop Visit registration (sometimes before, sometimes after), the service provider receives all necessary information for the overhaul object from the customer, often referred to as a Disk Sheet. The disk sheet provides serial information and operational data, all of which has to be entered into the system. If it is the first visit for a specific object, the serial structure has to be created in IFS/VIM before other activities, for example, Receipt into Inventory can take place.
After the operational data for an overhaul object is updated, modification tasks and life-limited part replacements are calculated. You can view the result of the calculation in the Task Summary window. Using this window, you can also select which of these tasks are to be included in the workscope for the given visit. In the defined workscope, the system can calculate suggested maintenance levels as well. These suggestions can be over-ridden if another maintenance level is needed for the visit.
Once the workscope is approved, it is released and generates an interim order structure. The interim order structure serves as a generic pegging structure, holding together various kinds of shop orders needed to perform the MRO work (disassembly orders, assembly orders, disposition orders, repair orders, etc.). The interim order structure also serves as the cornerstone for keeping track of workscope changes, and it is the link to the work order, where all costs are accumulated.
While the workscope is being defined, the overhaul object can already be en route to the service provider. For the object to be received into inventory, a specific receive order is required. It is created in conjunction with registering the MRO Shop Visit (by means of creating a visit-specific work order). Used for the physical receipt of the object into the inventory, the receive order also allows accessories to be recorded as non-inventory parts. Accessories can be specific measuring instruments, packaging material, and other items provided by the customer that need to be returned. To ensure that these accessories are included in the return shipment, they appear on picking lists and delivery notes in a specific appendix.
Executing a workscope essentially means releasing the interim order structure and executing all shop orders that are generated during that release.
When the interim order is released, a structure of corresponding disassembly and assembly orders will be created. At the lowest level of the disassembly order structure, a disposition order is created. The disposition is the phase in which the actual part is examined and proper actions are determined. The disposition results are logged on the disposition order. When the disposition is approved, internal repair shop orders are generated for the necessary repairs to be carried out. There are four other possible outcomes of the disposition:
Initially, the shop order structure is based on position parts. However, as disassembly progresses, actual parts (part number plus serial number) are received on the associated disassembly order, allowing it to be updated accordingly. In addition, the actual parts are reserved in the assembly order to ensure that they are not reused on another job.
When the actual part is received during disassembly, it is validated against the serial structure in IFS/VIM to ensure that the correct serial number is reported. If an error occurs (i.e., the reported part number differs from the one expected according the configuration information in IFS/VIM), an exception log is created. This allows the shop floor activities to continue even if there is a problem on the engineering side. However, the log records must be resolved before the overhaul object can be returned to the customer. A conformance check, performed at the end of the last assembly, ensures that all configuration rules and regulations have been followed, that all problematic log records have been resolved, and that all obligations have been met before the return can take place.
During the execution of the shop orders, all cost transactions are copied over to the work order transaction history. After completion of the visit, all cost lines in the transaction history are categorized and accumulated by cost types. The summary is a means of reducing the number of cost lines so that it is easier to determine the sales volume. In practical terms this means netting the quantity and costs for all cost lines.
Sales lines are created when the applicable agreement is applied to the accumulated cost lines. Since information about the position in the disassembly and assembly structure is passed on to the cost lines, structure-based pricing is also provided. The result is represented as a number of sales lines on the work order. Pricing can be re-run several times. When the final pricing is done, the sales lines are copied over as sales categories or sales parts to a customer order for further invoicing. It is possible to manually edit the sales lines and also split cost lines prior to invoicing.
Cost and sales lines are included in a special work order. Using this, it is also possible to view the operation margins per position in the structure, either by a unique position or aggregated to a specific level in the structure. This facilitates the creation of a detailed profitability and margin analysis.
The dispatch order that is created during the MRO Shop Visit is used for shipping the overhauled object back to the customer. After the final assembly order has been received, the object is reserved to the dispatch order. The normal customer order flow is used to handle the shipment.
Note: The dispatch order is not the same customer order as used for invoicing. The customer order used for invoicing is created during cost accumulation and pricing.
For customer order invoicing, standard system flows are used. Each combination of currency code and payer will result in a separate customer order being created when the sales lines are copied from the work order. This enables multi-currency invoicing. A separate invoice specification shows the sales categories for each position in the structure and lists the sales lines for each category.
Delayed invoicing—typically due to supplier invoices arriving after the dispatch of the overhauled object—is managed by creating new customer orders for the late costs.
Apart from MRO-dedicated functions and processes, several other features are of interest from an MRO perspective. Together, they greatly enhance the system and are important support tools for a successful implementation of the IFS/Complex Assembly MRO business solution.
The system provides the grouping of parts with high interchangeability into a rotable pool. This pool can be used as an additional security inventory or for expensive spare parts shared among different sites. The pool can be evaluated as an inventory or as a fixed asset with a specific depreciation plan. All issues from and replenishments of the pool are handled manually.
It is possible to manually peg an incoming supply to a specific source of demand. This could be very helpful in an MRO context, where it is fairly common that an incoming supply from external repair orders is delayed and that the sourcing needs to be re-planned.
This feature enables the user to block a supplier that is not registered as an approved supplier (e.g. for aircraft parts). With the system's authorization function, the block can be over-ridden.
For MRO operations, it is imperative to be able to tag all material with a specific owner code since most material is customer or government owned. IFS/ Applications provides this feature.
It is also imperative for MRO Operations to have the capability of assigning condition codes to parts and components since condition codes are used to determine everything from availability and action plans to costs and prices of the parts. IFS/Applications provides this feature.
Several different inventory valuation methods are available in a MRO context. A few been: