Measuring Compliance During Aircraft (Component) Redeliveries at KLM Engineering & Maintenance

Aircraft and aircraft components are redelivered to the next operator or owner during the phase-out process. During this process the operator is required by law and contract requirements to show compliance with maintenance procedures. At KLM E&M the phase-out documentation process is under increasing scrutiny as the number of aircraft phase-outs is assumed to rise in the coming years. The compliance process is investigated in order to measure, analyze and improve compliance with regard to maintenance data and record keeping during aircraft (component) redeliveries. For this purpose a benchmarking study is conducted to identify process bottlenecks. This study proved that in the case of KLM E&M phase-out, Landing Gears Life Limited Parts (LG LLPs) form the major bottleneck. Subsequently, an aircraft compliance model is developed to support the compliance cycle. As a case study, the documentation of LG LLPs of KLM’s Boeing B737 aircraft fleet is investigated in this research. LG LLPs which are most frequently interchanged and installed on the nose gear miss the highest percentage of documentation necessary to prove back-to-birth traceability (a traceable history of a component over its life), which is a necessary feature from a phase-out perspective. On the basis of the compliance model and the observed data, several improvements to the phase-out process are proposed.