There is a lot that can be said about optimizing the operations efficiency of routine maintenance checks. However, in the title of this article alone, we introduced a premise that you may, or may not, have been aware existed—Maintenance Kits. Regardless of your level of awareness, in this article, we are going to dive into your return on investment in moving toward a Maintenance Kit solution.
Read more: Mod Kits and Service Bulletins: What you need to know
However, there are a couple of clarifications we need to get out of the way first, so let’s jump in.
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Standard Kit. Tailored Kit. What is the difference? To be clear, we want to define what we mean by standardized and tailored kits. A standard kit is a set of preselected aircraft parts that are always the same across all of your A-Checks. A tailored kit contains those same baseline maintenance parts but also allows you the flexibility to add parts in case you have additional tasks such as defects that you would like to rectify during your A-Check. |
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) reduction
When one looks at the various areas of TCO—acquisition cost, operating cost, support cost, lifetime cost, and disposal cost—it becomes immediately clear what areas would see a significant reduction of cost if delegating that responsibility to a trusted service provider.
Parts acquisition becomes cheaper because there are fewer resources used for sourcing and acquiring parts from several vendors. Operational costs like transportation are lessened because all parts are coming from one single source. Support costs are reduced by simply dealing with one single vendor. Parts' lifetime cost ideally becomes the responsibility of the trusted vendor by only supplying the parts you need when you need them. Disposal costs are reduced because, with a solution where all maintenance parts are tailored to an aircraft or fleet, there is a reduction in overstock or parts that never get used.
Save more with a Custom Kit
Satair also offers tailor-made kits that are specific to routine maintenance. However, it is important to understand what you specifically need before choosing a solution.
One thing that should be a determining factor is the customization of a kit. Having the flexibility to add parts to an A-check kit so that repairs can be done at the same time as routine maintenance will effectively give you the ability to “kill two birds with one stone.”
According to our Market Product Manager Andreas Dik, both engineers and procurement will see a cost reduction benefit by having the ability to customize specific maintenance kits.
“Specifically to our [Satair] offer, engineers can benefit by having the data directly from us. They simply give us the task, and we provide the output that they need. So more specifically, which part numbers do they need. They don’t need to go line-by-line in MBD or Airbus World to find out what they need. They simply tell us what they are planning to do with their aircraft, and we can provide the parts they need.”
This level of customization can be a tremendous benefit to MRO because it can reduce time spent for both the aforementioned engineers, but also in procurement. However, following the path that Andreas laid down, let's dive into the specific benefit of Satair maintenance kits.
Expertise and Know How When You Need It
There is a unique cost reduction benefit to relying on Satair as your provider of Maintenance parts. Simply put, we have decades of knowledge & experience with Airbus aircraft. This is not a concern for the bigger airlines like Air France or Lufthansa. However, there is an inconvenient truth, that some smaller airlines, through no fault of their own, simply do not have the resources or the capacity to have Airbus aircraft experts in their ranks. That is where a partnership becomes beneficial.
To hear Andreas put it:
“The clear benefit is the fact that we are a part of Airbus Group, meaning we have Airbus technical expertise teams that can help us pull out the data very easily, which could potentially be quite time consuming and demanding for our customers.o. Maybe they don't have the capability, they don't have the manpower, or there could be other reasons why they're not able to extract the part numbers they need. In that case, they can just send us what task(s) they require for their A-Check, and then our team in Satair/Airbus will be able to pull that for them.”
In this case, the clear customer ROI is time, arguably the most valuable resource available to an airline.
What you should remember
Buying into the process of a maintenance kit for your routine maintenance checks on its own is a valuable step in a more efficient A-Check process. Material kits are becoming a more available option from several vendors in the industry. However, is it important to remember that a “standard kit” will only get you the basic parts you need on a regular basis. If you want to maximize your ROI, you might want to consider a vendor that can offer you tailored maintenance kit solutions — a vendor that is also backed up and supported by decades of expertise and know-how.