Discrete event simulation to improve aircraft availability and maintainability

This paper presents a study of maintenance operations at the Daytona Beach, Florida campus of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. Embry-Riddle is well-known for its large flight training programs. The Flight Training Department also maintains the school's aircraft on-site at the Daytona Beach campus. There, overall system availability at the operational level has been a chronic problem. The number of aircraft grounded for maintenance often reaches a quarter of the fleet. To study the situation, discrete-event simulation modeling was used to examine performance measures such as aircraft cycle times and mechanic labor utilization. Also examined was the impact of adding new aircraft to the fleet. As a result, a new working schedule for the allocation of mechanics to various shifts was proposed and accepted by management, resulting in reduced aircraft downtime and improved labor utilization.