Planning and Production

Line and Block Maintenance

A job card can exist as either a Line Maintenance job or as part of a Block Maintenance Inspection Package. The primary difference between the two types of job cards is that Line Maintenance job cards are designed to be carried out in a progressive line maintenance environment while block maintenance job cards will become part of a block maintenance inspection package which will be accomplished in bulk. These features are used primarily so that block maintenance inspection packages can be modeled prior to production and historical block maintenance results can be analyzed separately from progressive line-maintenance activities.

Deferred Maintenance and MEL Items

RAAS allows users to define MEL and other job priorities (AOG, etc.) each with a user defined day period which can in turn be applied to new or existing job cards. An existing job card can gain one of these priorities, for example an existing job card can become deferred due to parts shortage, at which point the job becomes a deferred maintenance item, or DMI. A more common type of DMI job card is created as a result of an in-flight snag that cannot be rectified immediately. RAAS has been designed to facilitate advanced deferred maintenance item handling and historical reporting.

Job Card Templates

As mentioned earlier a job card contains a large amount of information pertaining to the maintenance job. Some of the more important information is the accomplishment instructions, trade and man-hours requirements, access panel list, graphic attachments, reference material and parts/materials list.

The bulk of maintenance activity is both planned and repetitive in the sense that repeating work requirements appear on standard maintenance forecasts and subsequently become job cards. To help standardize work procedures and part pick lists RAAS incorporates Job Card Templates. A Job Card Template can be created for any component or inspection maintenance item tracked in RAAS. Templates can (optionally) include accomplishment instructions, trade and man-hours requirements, access panel list, graphic attachments, reference material and parts/materials list.

Use of job card templates is automatic. Assume that a 500 hour inspection appeared on a maintenance forecast and that a job card template existed for the 500 hour inspection. When the Maintenance Planner issues the forecast 500 hour inspection as a job RAAS will look to see if there is a template for this job, and will create the job card using the contents of the template. This process is automatic once the template has been created.

There are substantial benefits to using job card templates. Perhaps most important is that templates can be controlled and maintained by qualified personnel to create standards of maintenance, particularly in respect to accomplishment instructions and part lists.

Electronic Part Requisitioning

RAAS allows the Maintenance Planner to issue electronic parts requirement lists to Stores. If a job card has a parts list associated with it the Maintenance Planner can issue the parts requirements to the Part Requests module for a Stores clerk to respond to. Conversely, after having issued the parts requirements to Stores the Maintenance Planner can monitor, in real-time, which parts have been made available and which parts remain to be made available for individual jobs.

Job Cost Accumulation

Job cost including part consumption and manpower can be recorded on a job card. If parts are consumed during the process of completing a job the parts consumed are automatically listed on the job card as a result of Stores issuing them to the job card record. Estimated manpower requirements can be automatically listed as a result of a job card template or can be input manually. Actual manpower use can be recorded on each job card on a trade-by-trade basis with different hourly rates. Job cost reports are available as well as analysis of historical predicted versus actual cost.

Work Order Details

The Work Order module is the center of financial data collection and is where the bulk of all period-end financial data processing occurs.

A RAAS Work Order is essentially a bin that collects expense data including job card parts and labour costs, miscellaneous part issues and more. Information gathered by the work order module is discrete in that individual parts and labor costs are not summarized but retain complete detail. Through the work order module users can manipulate costs for a variety of purposes including the application of vendor mark-ups or simply streamlining financial reporting to your accounting system.