You didn't have to look far at this year's MRO Europe to see the numerous announcements aiming to shake up the foundations of supply chain management. But what are some MRO survival strategies for riding these waves of change?

There is more than one area where the MRO industry struggles to keep up with the relentless march of technological progress. In many cases, the ambition of those looking to shake things up doesn't always match the tremendous willpower and resources it will take to reshape some of the more archaic areas of the industry.

This is not to say that progress is not being made. Quite the contrary, in fact. Therefore, we've outlined a few of the more essential survival strategies for navigating the changing MRO landscape.

Understanding predictive maintenance

Predictive aircraft maintenance is arguably one of the most significant game-changers to hit the MRO industry, and the race is well underway for who can develop the most robust solutions.

Despite the hype, many questions are still being raised as to how this will affect the smaller MRO providers. The potential loss of work as a result of less unscheduled maintenance events and better life tracking of parts for airlines, is balanced out by the potential for smaller MRO providers to provide more competitive costs and turnaround time.

While achieving this overall vision of a purely digital MRO sometimes feels stranger than fiction, change is coming—albeit, more as an evolution rather than a revolution. We reported on the view of predictive maintenance and the road to a proactive supply chain after 2018's MRO Europe. Since then, both industry perception and market investment have only grown warmer to prospects of an MRO industry driven by data and analytics.

Like many other industries leveraging the power of data harvesting and analytics, some legal and privacy challenges are arising with airlines and OEMs gathering and processing data from repair facilities and numerous aircraft components. We recently covered some of the issues that could arise with single players owning both the software and the data.

Collecting accurate and comprehensive datasets is going to be one of the most valuable assets in the coming years. If smaller MROs can work towards keeping meticulous record-keeping, it could make their business more valuable as larger players in the industry seek to start procuring those datasets for their supply chain solutions.

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Survival strategies: Supply chain management in the aviation industry