Preventive Maintenance Planning in A Nigerian Aircraft Industry using Quality Function Deployment

Abstract

Quality improvement research in aircraft maintenance as well as our knowledge of the methods in the course of which enhancement is achieved and managed is disoriented and deficient. Current preventive maintenance practices are usually based on the number of flight cycles, flight hours or calendar time. Such PM activities are technical programme-oriented without any consideration for customer requirements are expectations. The unfortunate issue is that the results provided by these technically-oriented decisions are usually sub-optional. After characterised by poor customer satisfaction, requiring repeat services in some cases. A worse situation may even result such that total customer dissatisfaction may trigger out souring maintenance services despite having resources for repairs and services. In this communication, a complete departure from current practice in preventive maintenance of pure technical content to technical plus customer focused practice is adopted. This innovative approach involves obtaining customer requirements and translating them into design requirements in the house of quality of the quality function deployment (QFD). Questionnaire were developed and administered while the results were coupled with interviews to obtain the desired model validation of the QFD structure formulated. The results indicated feasibility of the proposed approach in practice. With thus novel contribution to literature, preventive maintenance managers in airline could confidently schedule services for success with a customer orientation.