What business values can Airline Engineering deliver during this COVID 19 recovery

Recovery from the COVID 19 crisis is one of the hot topics of discussion in the business establishment, where experts try to assess the recovery scenarios and predict the recovery with V, U, and L shaped curves. As there is uncertainty in understanding the changes in the customer behaviour and pattern of demand expected there is a puzzle to be solved of what capacity can be deployed for operations and what could be the next new normal. In this article, I would like to bring forward some of the challenges facing airline engineering and what business values can be contributed.

The airline has kept the fleet under parking/storage conditions. Engineers have a great responsibility of protecting this high-value machine. Returning back to service the aircraft to a flight-ready condition requires a lot of airworthiness activities to be performed. It requires all the elements in the maintenance ecosystem to work in synchronization with each other to have a seamless operation. Now due to the global disruption of the supply chain, there are challenges in the accomplishment of the task due to mobility issues, and these tasks cannot be done through a virtual model. Airline engineering needs to play two important roles in the recovery action. Firstly, the responsibility of keeping the aircraft safe for the guests by following appropriate disinfectant procedures. Secondly, keeping the Total Maintenance cost low as engineering cost is the second major cost next to fuel in airline operations.

Building Trust:

Airline engineering department has the objective of meeting the dispatch reliability goals, quick turnaround times, maintain OTP, and ensure optimum utilization of the fleet. However, in the current scenario, the most important concern for a guest will be to have a safe flight without getting infected. The engineering division needs to give special attention to the cabin cleanliness and ensure that all this cleaning activity is carried out with the highest quality. A genuine approach to this process can build trust among the guest and helps to bring back the lost demand. The first look of the cabin “feel-good factor” is what we need to focus on and let the customer be aware of the efforts being put on the cabin cleanliness. Having the guest informed about the quality of the cabin offered including the protection in the air circulation and the scientific facts (evidence-based) of why there are hardly any chances of getting infected inside a cabin will help to reduce the psychological fear of guests and this will help airlines accelerate the recovery. Gaining trust and confidence based on the customer experience will help in reaping the benefit of the customer value proposition and gain a competitive advantage.

Rethink the Processes:

Getting back to the pre-crisis volume (traffic levels) of supply and demand may take a while. As there seem to be issues pertaining to capacity deployment airline engineering needs to take this opportunity to rethink the way it operates and thus contributing towards better cost management and efficient processes.

From the Engineering process perspective, most of the processes in airline engineering can be categorized as a Non-value-added category (regulatory requirement). A review of the process needs to be done keeping in view of the well known “cowpath theory” and “status quo” thereafter through the growth and mature stage. If the right processes are not established at the earliest stage there is a risk in replication and inefficiency gets magnified multiple times when the organization gets mature.  As such, there exists an opportunity to relook into the processes and we can rethink the way we accomplish it.

In the past 30 years, though there were major changes in regulation by way of harmonization with international standards, the fundamental structure of the organization still remains the same. The structure is broken down into independent silos or functional departments, and while working in silos each of the verticals works towards its own departmental goal and fails to get aligned towards the one big objective of why we exist in the business.

Today, having a customer-centric organization is imperative. As such, breaking down all the silos within the organization is necessary to rebuild a high performing and agile organization that delivers efficient and effective services as it represents the organization's capabilities. A radical approach and an innovation culture is required to rebuild a whole new system and sustain the goal. One way airlines can achieve this is by making all the staff understand the philosophy of what it means by customer-centric and proactively delivering the customer values and needs. Encouraging the staff to identify the area of improvement in each area of business processes, studying the problems, and addressing it through collective wisdom will yield results.

The improvement and the level of impact will be based on the technological adaptation and digital maturity of the firm. Documenting the process will help the organization to measure what it does to meet the objectives and the resources needed to deliver the deliverables to its expected standard. Staff must be made part of the implementation to make them feel valuable in the system and link to a reward mechanism. Post-implementation a framework of knowledge management is essential to keep the organizational knowledge relevant and stay competitive.  Risk management is another area that needs to be integrated with the DNA of airline processes to stay resilient and be self -sustained.

In my opinion we need to approach it as if we start new and gain momentum as it matures and evolves even stronger.

This article was originally published on my LinkedIn page.

What is Remote Audit and how is it different from Onsite Audit

 

It formally introduced the Remote audit methods into ISO 19011 in the 2011 edition itself. Remote audits offer a great deal of flexibility as limitations imposed by travel. But why do we talk about it now? Or why do we need it now? 

In a simple term its “uncertainty” and it's because of the abnormal conditions under which operations currently take place. 

In this article, I will discuss the Virtual Audit or remote audit method and its protocol. This article will also provide guidance to airlines on how to effectively manage quality, compliance and safety monitoring during the COVID-19 crisis through virtual or remote audit methods. Later in this article, I have also included some recommendations for the monitoring of the operations conducted under COVID-19 measures, if the operations become limited or inactive or suspended. 

We can put the uncertainty because of the abnormal conditions into three issues as “temporary suspension”, “Partial operation with limited resource” and “Cancelling flights”. Aviation authorities, and industry organizations such as IATA, are issuing new regulations and guidance concerning the management of the operations effected by the COVID-19 crisis. The cumulative outcome is that airlines are facing challenges in monitoring their operations due to these frequent changes, and airlines need to closely monitor this crisis.

The operator needs to have a process to identify changes within or external (stressing the term within or external) to the organization that has the potential to affect the level of safety risks associated with aircraft operations, and to manage risks that may arise. And hence it is important, airlines should ensure it applies risk management to any changes introduced. So, in this context, we can very well assume that these continuous changes have the potential to affect the established operational processes, procedures, products, equipment and/or services. 

To understand, let's look into the concept of remote audit from a theoretical perspective. By putting the dimension of human interaction and distance in two axis, let us say Distance as (onsite and remote) along the axis and Human involvement (such as human interaction and no human interaction along Y-axis), we will get the four basic methodologies of audit (say as conventional, surveillance, Desktop audit and Remote (which is Virtual Audit) the topic discussion.

So, by definition, on-site audit activities are performed at the location of the auditee. Remote audit activities are performed at any place other than the location of the auditee, regardless of the distance. So, on the level of the audit program itself, ensure that the selection of the audit method (remote or on-site) is suitable and balanced, in order to ensure satisfactory achievement of audit program objectives.

Performance of an audit involves an interaction among individuals with the management system being audited and the technology used to conduct the audit. If the current condition does not allow to perform of internal onsite audits, airlines may decide to perform remote audits as an alternative method. We need to approach this using a risk-based approach so that the Remote audit is as equivalent to the conventional onsite audit. It should document key processes and procedures relevant to such methods.

So, here is the approach that we can take when planning to do a remote or virtual audit. To prepare for a remote audit, there are some important things to be considered. To perform an efficient audit, we need to take a phase-wise approach when dealing with virtual audit methods. Phase 1 will be Audit planning, phase 2 will be documentation audit and the 3rd phase will be Implementation Audit. We can apply remote audit for internal and external audits including service providers. The feasibility of remote audit activities can depend on the level of confidence between auditor and auditee’s personnel. 

Now, we will have a detailed view of what needs to be considered in each phase of the audit.

To start with Phase 1, Audit Planning, we must consider; 

• A Detailed audit plan that includes audit scope, date of audit, scheduled calls.
• Identifying the personnel to be interviewed.
• Plan for the opening meeting and inviting the major stakeholders to be attending. 
• IT solutions for video conferencing and document sharing. 
• We need to confirm the video conferencing and document sharing platform with the auditee, especially with foreign organizations. 
• Different countries will have different software in practice. 

Sometimes, we need to adapt their software for the virtual session because of country or company restrictions on certain software. Consider sharing of Relevant checklist in advance (to do a desktop verification) and requesting a cross-reference list which will support during the documentation verification phase and enable an efficient remote assessment.

Moving to Phase 2, Documentation Audit we must consider;

• Reviewing the cross-reference list.
• Assessing the documentation prior to the start of the remote audit.
• Analyzing the previous audit results and other information.

Then the third phase is Implementation Audit, consider; 

• Assessing records and evidence provided through cloud storage or shared server, live sharing of screens or any other acceptable methods.
• Observing records and evidence through shared images or screens.
• Uploading records and pieces of evidence into an auditing software.
• Interviewing management and operational personnel through video conference tools.
• Observing the operation through live video broadcasting.

Increasing sampling size whenever possible, to compensate for the lack of direct observation of operations. If any part of the operations became inactive because of the crisis, for example, if the airline temporarily suspended its passenger transport operations, it will adjust the audit plan under the regulatory provision and may postpone the relevant audits. 

However, before the inactive operations we need to consider;

• Collecting and analyzing the self-assessments performed by the relevant departments.
• Conducting remote assessment(s) before the inactive operation restarts.
• Conducting a risk assessment to ensure compliance with the requirements. if required.

If an airline cannot perform onsite or remote audits because of a lack of resources or unavailability of operational and/or management personnel. It should make an assessment to identify the risk levels.

• Provisions with immediate concerns requiring mitigation may be determined as high risk.
• Provisions with significant concerns requiring monitoring may be determined as medium risk.
• Provisions with minimal or no concerns may be determined as low risk.

It should identify risk of not complying for short term (0-30 days), medium-term (30-90 days) and long term (90-120 days). If an activity related to a mandatory requirement is subject to a regulatory exemption, this also, to be considered when risk assessment is performed. 

So, in conclusion, the effective and flexible monitoring of quality, compliance, and safety management systems carry special importance during this circumstance. The virtual audit is one method to monitor it effectively. To know more about remote audit protocol, Please watch the video link.

Hope you have enjoyed reading this article. Thank you.

Impact of Artificial Intelligence in Aviation Industry

Basics of Artificial Intelligence:

Science fiction narratives based on fear of a dystopian future have narrated various fictional contents, where Intelligent robots take over the human race and enslave all of humanity. Though the technology is not quite at the superhuman level of robots as portrayed in the science fiction stories, artificial intelligence tools have already had a significant impact on our day to day lives. May it be a simple google search where search results displayed as per RankBrain, walking into your office where your identity is recognized by image / facial recognition software, interaction with a chatbot where Natural Language Processing (NLP) is at work or an email spam filter. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already assisting the humans whether known or unknowingly.

Artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science that endeavours to replicate human intelligence into machines so that machines can perform specific tasks that require human intelligence or AI can also be defined as the ability of a computer to mimic human intelligence. Artificial intelligence is not a new invention, this subject has been an area of research and education in academics for the last 70 years, and remained in academic laboratories. Now, due to the advancement in the processing power, statistical techniques and tools have supported this field of science to innovate new applications for real-world problem/scenarios and also commercially viable. This article is intended to  give a high-level view of artificial intelligence in a simple language for the understanding of the aviation community.

As we have already seen that, AI technologies endeavours to replicate the human intelligence in machines and based on this characteristic, AI can be classified into two types, Type 1 is based on capability (to the extent by which AI is capable to replicate Human Intelligence) & Type 2 is  based on functionality (performing simple basic operations to advanced level conscious decisions). Tuning test is the methodology used to determine the capability of artificial intelligence.

Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI), Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI) are the types of AI-based on capability. Reactive machines, limited memory machines, the theory of mind, and self-aware AI are classifications based on functionality. The table below shows the types of AI, its attributes and real-world examples or applications.

The moment a search for any content related to AI is made on the web, it will be flooded with  various technical jargons such as machine learning, deep learning, data science, computer vision, Robot Process Automation (RPA) and so on, let’s understand in a structured way.

Artificial Intelligence is like a brain (manmade thinking power) for perceiving, learning, language understanding, reasoning, and solving problems.  Data is like the energy that supports the activity of the brain through data science, machine learning techniques and algorithms to make decisions. Robotic process automation is like hands, i.e., the tools to execute the decisions of AI. The tools can be soft tools (e.g. software, chatbots) or hard tools (e.g. robots, intelligent machines). Today's AI is probabilistic and based on machine learning, which means it is no longer based on conventional “if - then - else if” rules. Since, digitalization and AI rely on data, both the quantity and the quality of data are of critical importance to support the successful implementation of these technologies. Computer vision to help computers “see” and understand the content of digital images such as photographs and videos.

How does the AI Impact Aviation Industry?

Artificial intelligence and digitalization is impacting the commercial aviation industry in a huge way and has the potential to disrupt the aviation industry and its entire value chain. AI capabilities can build new services, new business capabilities and models or can enhance the existing airline business capabilities such as customer touchpoints, operational, support,  management processes. The business establishment believes that investing in AI strategically can position them better in the marketplace. A few use cases where AI got its place are revenue management, targeted advertising, ticketing kiosks, passenger identification, assisting customers, baggage screening, maintenance prediction, predictive analytics, pattern recognition, auto-scheduling, customer feedback etc. This use cases will not only provide better customer experience but also at the same time will reduce the operational and labour cost for airlines.

It can be very well concluded that AI and digitalization are game-changers in aviation, as in every other sector. The use of AI and digitalization technologies allows for more safety, adaptability, optimization, efficiency, capacity and support to all aviation stakeholders.

AI-led growth can impact the economy in three ways, creating new virtual workforce, enhancing the existing skills and tasks (as a complement system) and driving innovations. The AI in the aviation market is likely to reach USD 2,222.5 million by 2025, at a CAGR of 46.65%. However, the limited number of experts in AI is restraining the growth of AI in the aviation market.

The aviation industry is a safety-sensitive / critical industry, as such application of AI in the industry should have due consideration on safety-sensitive and non-safety sensitive aspects. There is considerable work ongoing in industry and academia in the area of “Provable AI” and “Trustable AI” which is required to bring AI into the safety-critical operational domains. These new technologies will contribute to the future of aviation and will redefine the core competencies of aviation professionals.

Aircraft End of Life Management and Recycling

Aircraft Recycling and End of life have come into focus very recently. After accumulating thousands of flight hours, every aircraft will have to retire from the service due to various reasons as technical or economical. Here in this article we may focus on aircraft retirement and end of life due to economical reasons and provides an overview of aircraft recycling and end of life management.

An aircraft’s life cycle consists of different phases, a generally agreed way of categorizing is into five to seven phases such as material, design, supply chain, manufacture, transportation, aircraft operation, and end-of-life. 

The end of life typically is the last phase of Aircraft life cycle management. It starts with the operator’s decision to withdraw the aircraft from the active fleet and followed by the decision of the aircraft owner to disassemble and dismantle the aircraft, as opposed to the other alternatives. The decision to dismantle mostly depends upon whether the value of aircraft in the dismantled condition is higher than it is in the flying condition.  

The end-of-life stage of the aircraft’s life cycle was neglected for a long time. Thousands of retired aircraft have been stored in so-called aircraft graveyards, Planes were dismantled in huge areas and landfilling does not seem to be a suitable long-term solution for handling aircraft at their end-of-life stage, as there was an increased worldwide demand for raw material and secondary material. The amount of retired aircraft each year is increasing and landfilling does not seem to be a sustainable end-of-life alternative. Thus there was a need for ecological End of life management for aircraft, which on its objective is to avoid discard or reduce landfill.

The "End of life hierarchy" model is a heuristic approach widely accepted among practitioners. At the top of the hierarchy having waste prevention as the most favored option followed by re-use, recycling, recovery (e.g. energy recovery), and finally, discard (landfill of non-recovery waste) at the least favored option. 

The End Of Life (EOL) process is divided into two phases, the first being removal of aircraft parts for reuse while aircraft having its certification and while the second phase is recycling and dismantling of aircraft once it loses its certification. EOL phases can also be approached as product recycling level and material recycling level. In this article, the approach on the basis of certification is preferred. The components/parts removed while having their certification status enters into the aviation supply chain as used parts. Other materials that were removed may get into the non-aviation business domain or declared as waste. This implies there is an involvement of three business domains (Aviation business, Non-aviation business, and Waste business). 

The average retirement age of passenger aircraft around the world is 25 years. Recycling an airplane can avoid parking costs, minimize environmental impacts, make money from a part out and metal sales, and create new business opportunities. According to estimates, by 2030 the total number of aircraft that need to be recycled is between 12000 to 17000 airplanes, which will account for up to 45% (approx) of the global fleet. In line with this, the recycling business market is expected to reach USD 5.40 Billion by 2027 from 4.70 billion in 2019. The number of aircraft retirements will range from 700 to 2000 aircraft per year and depends on various factors including economic indicators.

Despite the lack of regulations or standards available to approach End of life, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and associations have over period of time has introduced best practices in this business domain. Briefly mentioned, in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, Airbus and Boeing have introduced alternative approaches namely PAMELA (Process for Advanced Management of End-of-Life Aircraft) and AFRA (Aircraft Fleet Recycling Association) respectively. Today, it is generally recognized that 80% to 95% of an aircraft can be recycled. Between 40% and 50% of the weight of most dismantled aircraft finds its way back to the parts distribution pipeline and engines makes almost 80% to 90% of the value. As an approach towards the circular economy, manufacturers and operators are working towards the development of the 100% recyclable airplane. 

By way of acknowledging the potential business scope in this segment, the government of India has recently revised the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FMEA) regulation, which now allows the export of planes in complete knocked-down or partial knocked-down conditions. This has paved the seed for a new business in India. Now, India can be a hub for aircraft recycling, a place for storage or resale of parts of dismantled aircraft, but it requires an industrial ecosystem to be in place to achieve it. 

With all this, the important thing is that the industry needs to continue research on developing and implementing sustainable management practices to reduce environmental impacts and to create a sustainable industrial ecosystem.