An Integrated Maintenance and Asset Management System (IMAMS)

Aircraft consists of large number of complex units - rotating equipments, utility related equipments, associated instruments, control systems with associated computing systems, security and safety relevant equipments etc. The management of various assets present in the aircraft encompasses the continuous monitoring of the particular asset or equipment from the operation, performance point of view, periodic evaluation of the health of the asset in an independent situation as well as in the integrated system, activating necessary alarms to the concerned people about the state of the unit or asset, identification of the maintenance requirements, maintaining the operational history of the equipment, tracking the maintenance operations schedule and safe resumption of the operation etc. In certain situations, there exists a need to forecast the equipment health situation and indicating or activating the appropriate alarm sufficiently in advance which could be great differentiating factor. Last decade has seen the emergence of independent applications or set of tools to address some of the asset management related functionalities. However, they handle tasks/activities in an independent manner and depend on other external systems/applications for critical data. The areas of equipment health management supported with advanced diagnostic features for prediction capabilities, empirical. / Statistical analysis based functionalities; close integration with the associated applications such as purchase information system etc. would make the asset management more effective. An optimized asset management and maintenance activity greatly enhances the overall productivity and operational efficiency of the airline industry. This paper describes the state of the technology in this area and proposes an integrated framework of the system along with a high level architecture of the same.