Example operational action plan · Aircraft maintenance
A full order book. An action plan to recover production capacity.
An independent aircraft maintenance company. The orders are there, but turnaround times are getting longer and margins are eroding. In three days, 230 interviews showed where capacity is being lost and what management can decide.
Composite example drawn from our engagements. Conservative estimates; detailed assumptions at the end of the page.
230
interviews in three days
92%
of people invited took part
3 sites
all functions
This aircraft maintenance company has invested, hired and extended its approvals. Yet its turnaround times keep getting longer. Management wanted to know where capacity is being lost and how to recover it.
The case, from listening to decision
- 251 people invited, 230 interviews in three days.
- The interviews group into twelve findings.
- Six findings link to the three priorities: €2.1M/year in direct cost.
- Five decisions for the leadership team.
- The plan targets ≈ €1.15M/year in gains, for ≈ €490k committed over twelve months.
230 interviews
12 findings
3 priorities
5 decisions
The case, from listening to decision
- 251 people invited, 230 interviews in three days.
- The interviews group into twelve findings.
- Six findings link to the three priorities: €2.1M/year in direct cost.
- Five decisions for the leadership team.
- The plan targets ≈ €1.15M/year in gains, for ≈ €490k committed over twelve months.
230 interviews
12 findings
3 priorities
5 decisions
AT A GLANCE
What the bottlenecks cost and what the plan must deliver
Priority
Bottleneck addressed
Current cost
Target gain
1. Give certified mechanics their time back
Bottleneck addressed
Scattered hours
Current cost
€1.25M/year
Target gain
€700k/year
2. Unblock quote costing after aircraft inspection
Bottleneck addressed
Aircraft waiting for quotes
Current cost
€480k/year
Target gain
€260k/year
3. Establish the hangar’s real production capacity and share it
Bottleneck addressed
Dates promised without validation
Current cost
€370k/year
Target gain
€180k/year
Additional actions
Target gain
≈ €10k/year
Total (direct costs and gains)
Current cost
€2.1M/year
Target gain
≈ €1.15M/year
Implementation: around €490k over twelve months. First gains from week six. Freed-up capacity, turnaround times met and mechanic retention come on top of these amounts, but are not counted in the direct cost.
THE THREE PRIORITIES
From bottleneck to action, priority by priority
The plan builds on four strengths identified in the interviews: technical expertise, a safety culture people live by, responsiveness to emergencies and attachment to the trade. It tackles the organisational bottlenecks that hold these strengths back.
Key
- Costed impact: direct cost
- Estimated impact, to be validated
- The three priorities
- P1Finding linked to a priority
The twelve findings
- 1 · Mechanics’ hours scattered
- 2 · Post-inspection costing blocked
- 3 · Dates promised without validation
- 4 · Documentation scattered despite the CMMS
- 5 · No parts delivery to the workstation
- 6 · Too few licence holders
- 7 · Delays missing from customer indicators
- 8 · Less well-informed sites
- 9 · “On the job” onboarding
- 10 · AOG desk focused on urgency
- 11 · Breakdown history unused
- 12 · Sales targets out of step with cycles
The interviews come together in twelve findings; a yellow ring marks the three priorities; the “Act now” quadrant is shaded.
Priority 1
Give certified mechanics their time back
Confirmation: a difficulty already recognised, now costed
What is blocking
Certified mechanics’ hours are scattered across searching for documentation, preparing checks and hunting for parts: each technician “goes shopping”. The technicians interviewed estimate they spend only a third of their day on maintenance work.
Replacing the CMMS (computerised maintenance management system, the software that plans and tracks the work) would not fix this dispersion.
What the teams say
The theme runs through 148 of the 230 interviews.
“I spend more time looking for the right page than removing the part.”
— A certified technician
What the plan solves
Prepare checks to a single standard.
Deliver parts directly to the workstation.
Make documentation searchable in natural language, with the exact reference cited.
Current cost
≈ €1.25M/year
Target gain
≈ €700k/year, plus restored production capacity
Priority 2
Unblock quote costing after aircraft inspection
Discovery: missing from management’s priorities
What is blocking
Every inspection is followed by a quote that the aircraft operator must approve before work begins. Two people handle all quotes: an estimator, the only one who knows all the rates, then the sales manager, who approves them.
Every quote follows the same route: a €2,800 quote waits behind an €80,000 quote. Meanwhile, the aircraft occupies a hangar slot without moving forward.
What the teams say
Raised in 74 interviews. Teams cite three to six working days of waiting on heavy checks.
“When I’m on leave, the queue stops. I know it, everyone knows it.”
— A member of the costing team
What the plan commits to
Enter each maintenance job only once.
Split quotes by amount and delegate approval thresholds.
Prefill the quote from the required inspections.
Current cost
≈ €480k/year
Target gain
≈ €260k/year, plus freed-up hangar capacity and cash
Priority 3
Establish the hangar’s real production capacity and share it
Confirmation: a difficulty already recognised, now costed
What is blocking
The sales team sells the theoretical capacity of the hangar slots. Dates are promised without validation by the department that plans the hangar’s workload.
The hangar compensates with overtime and schedule changes.
What the teams say
Raised in 89 interviews.
“We sell hangar weeks we don’t have.”
— A production planner
What the plan commits to
Share a single schedule between sales and the hangar.
Have the expert department validate every date before any promise to the customer.
Current cost
≈ €370k/year
Target gain
≈ €180k/year, plus turnaround times met
THE DECISIONS
Five decisions for the leadership team
The brief to the leadership team runs to five pages: the strengths to preserve, the causes of the bottlenecks, their cost and the proposed decisions.
1. Appoint a single owner for check preparation.
Priority 1
Priority 1
2. Split quotes by amount and delegate approval thresholds.
Priority 2
Priority 2
3. Have the expert department validate every date before any commitment, from the first week of the plan.
Priority 3
Priority 3
4. Place data and AI projects under the authority of airworthiness, which guarantees aircraft safety. Launch the documentation assistant in month 2.
Where AI fits
Where AI fits
5. Within 90 days, choose which of the three new offerings to test first.
Opportunities
Opportunities
ORDER AND PACE
In what order and at what pace
Each priority prepares the next: consolidate references before rolling out the documentation assistant, free up time in the hangar before selling more, validate capacity before promising a date.
End of week 6
≈ €320k/year
in gains
Committed cost: ≈ €40k
Strength of evidence: supported
End of month 6
≈ €890k/year
in gains
Committed cost: ≈ €260k
Strength of evidence: supported to inferred
End of month 12
≈ €1.15M/year
in gains
Committed cost: ≈ €490k
Strength of evidence: inferred to assumption
The amounts show the annual gain reached at each milestone, as a conservative estimate.
Conditions for success
A member of the leadership team champions the programme with the teams.
From the start, two weeks of measurement set the baseline: actual maintenance time (hands on tools), costing lead times, gaps in aircraft return dates.
A monthly review tracks gains and unblocks pending actions.
A separate channel lets people report workload problems.
WHERE AI FITS
Preparing the organisation to deploy AI
The documentation assistant and assisted quoting require up-to-date references, single entry of maintenance jobs and consistently prepared checks. AI can then search, compile and prefill reliable information.
Key
- Stage 1 · months 2 to 4
- Stage 2 · months 4 to 9
- Stage 3 · months 9 to 15, data permitting
- Organisation first, no AI
- Stays human
The fourteen activities
- A · Search the documentation
- B · Re-key inspection findings
- C · Prepare check packs
- D · Cost routine quotes
- E · Chase and coordinate quotes
- F · Cost complex work
- G · Triage AOG requests
- H · Diagnose from history
- I · Forecast parts consumption
- J · Anticipate breakdowns in the maintained fleet
- K · Fetch parts from stores
- L · Validate capacity and dates
- M · Sign off return to service
- N · Hands-on work
Fourteen activities, then a fifteen-month timeline: activities light up in the month their stage begins (2, 4, 9).
Stage 1 · months 2 to 4
The documentation assistant
Query manuals, instructions and bulletins in natural language, with the exact reference. Generate check packs. Prefill quotes from maintenance job findings.
Investment: €60k to €90k
Stage 2 · months 4 to 9
The diagnostic co-pilot
Suggestions based on job history by aircraft type. Triage of AOG requests (aircraft on ground, grounded awaiting repair). Support for complex costing.
Investment: €80k to €120k
Stage 3 · months 9 to 15
Predictive analytics
Forecast parts consumption, the reliability of the fleet under maintenance and hangar slot occupancy. Depends on data quality.
Investment: €100k to €150k
Gains from stages 1 and 2 are already counted in the three priorities. Stage 3 is not costed.
OPPORTUNITIES
Three business opportunities uncovered and worth testing
The 23 opportunities raised by the teams group into three avenues.
A predictive reliability offering
Breakdown history sits unused in the CMMS, and some operators are asking, in essence: “you see our breakdowns before we do: tell us.”
First step: a 90-day pilot with two volunteer operators, on a single aircraft type.
A maintenance academy
Train mechanics for the company itself and for operators that no longer recruit, building on existing approvals.
A per-flight-hour contract
A regular invoice in exchange for a multi-year commitment. Operators control their budget and the hangar anticipates its workload.
CHECKING THE FIGURES
The source of these figures
The twelve findings
The twelve findings
A confirmation quantifies a difficulty management already recognises. A discovery reveals a mechanism missing from the priorities. A nuance redirects the response.
1 · Confirmation: Certified mechanics’ hours are scattered (documentation, preparation, parts)
Direct cost: ≈ €1.25M/year2 · Discovery: Costing quotes after inspection blocks the chain
Direct cost: ≈ €480k/year3 · Confirmation: Sales dates rely on a theoretical capacity the hangar cannot deliver
Direct cost: ≈ €370k/year4 · Nuance: Scattered documentation wastes time, even with the CMMS in place
Direct cost: counted in finding no. 15 · Confirmation: There is no parts delivery to the workstation: each technician “goes shopping”
Direct cost: counted in finding no. 16 · Discovery: On some aircraft, return to service depends on too few licence holders (the mechanics authorised to sign it off)
Direct cost: not quantified, organisation-wide effect7 · Discovery: Teams absorb internal delays, which then disappear from customer indicators
Direct cost: not quantified, delays missing from indicators8 · Confirmation: The two production sites have poorer access to information than the main site
Direct cost: not quantified, organisation-wide effect9 · Confirmation: Onboarding happens “on the job”: six to nine months before people work independently
Direct cost: not quantified, amplifies the other findings10 · Nuance: The AOG desk rewards urgency, never prevention
Direct cost: not quantified, organisation-wide effect11 · Discovery: Breakdown history in the CMMS is not used to anticipate incidents
Direct cost: not quantified, source of an opportunity12 · Confirmation: Monthly sales targets ignore the long cycles of checks
Direct cost: counted in finding no. 3
Calculation assumptions
Calculation assumptions
Calculation basis: €38 fully loaded hourly cost, 46 working weeks, reported times reduced by 30% as a precaution. Results from the 230 interviews are scaled up to the 251 employees.
The gross total of the bottlenecks comes to about €3.2M. After removing hours counted in several findings, the direct cost retained is €2.1M/year.
The three priorities represent about €1.14M/year. With the additional actions, the report retains about €1.15M/year, within a range of €1.1M to €1.3M.
Example breakdown, priority 2: €265k of re-keying and rebuilding information, €130k of chasing and coordination, €85k of corrections to rates and references. Lost hangar capacity is not included: costing it requires the billing rate per slot, a priority data point to collect.
Outside the totals: effects on capacity, turnaround times, retention and overtime.
WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU
WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU
What action plan does your business need?
Operational action plan
Across a company, a division or several sites: understand the bottlenecks and build a costed plan.
Lead-to-cash process
From first contact to cash collection: identify what consumes sales time and prioritise actions.
AI adoption
Identify the activities to transform, prioritise use cases and organise their deployment.
LET’S TALK
Which priority do you want to tackle?
In thirty minutes with a partner, clarify your needs and the scope involved. We explain what Spentia can offer.
Leave your contact details to arrange this conversation or request an example deliverable.
Prefer email? Write to us here
or get in touch on social media.
LET’S TALK
Which priority do you want to tackle?
In thirty minutes with a partner, clarify your needs and the scope involved. We explain what Spentia can offer.
Leave your contact details to arrange this conversation or request an example deliverable.
Prefer email? Write to us here
or get in touch on social media.
LET’S TALK
Which priority do you want to tackle?
In thirty minutes with a partner, clarify your needs and the scope involved. We explain what Spentia can offer.
Leave your contact details to arrange this conversation or request an example deliverable.
Prefer email? Write to us here
or get in touch on social media.