Management Services

After decades working in many positions in the MRO/CAMO/Airline environment, we decided to add a service to our existing portfolio.

 

The last 25 years we have worked projects in the Aeronautical MRO and CAMO business and have been exposed to, and involved in many different organisations.

 

After such time, one develops a sharp sense of organisational culture, balance of power within organisations (or lack thereof), conflicts of personal and organisational interests, sub optimisation of processes and objectives and mismatches in interfaces between them.

 

Although MRO and CAMO organisations in EASA are regulated to the extreme (in our humble opinion). The ever larger set of regulations resonate less and less within the organisations, the more the regulatory load increases.

The more regulations, the more grows the undercurrent in MRO organisations, the more prescriptive the regulations become.

Large organisational expositions are being drafted up, sometimes copy pasted from others, some CAA’s draft their examples for organisations to edit.

MOE’s become box ticking for CAA audits and this is missing the point of the regulations which are intended to enable to organisation to work and produce safely and make organisations operate at a economically level playing field by not allowing organisations to skirt the rules or good practices.

 

This article goes into the following factors;

1. Effective Management

2. Project Management

3. Operation economics

4. Information / data management

5. Human factors and management

 

Readers will notice the absence of safety management in the above summary.

Our position is that safety management should be part of all of the above. It should not be limited to a SMS software package which ticks the regulatory box. Safety Management should be a way of life ingrained in the thinking of everyone working in the world of MRO operation.

 

1.    Effective Management

 

Effective management is not an exact science but a skill that combines adherence to objectives and commitments with a gut feeling for how a group of people work together to achieve the objectives.

It is imperative that the primary objectives for an organisation are crystal clear; it helps to record them and make it visible for all participants and stake holders.

Depending on the organisation there will be sub- objectives or more often called KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) for individuals or departments.

Important that this set of objectives are not conflicting.

Transparency and predictability are paramount.

Often organisations pride themselves of being “inventive” and “flexible”. That is often a sign of a certain level of disorganisation and provides excellent opportunities for ambitious people to get themselves in the spotlight. While motivation and ambition are good traits, it should never lead to disengagement op people with less high profile. Accountability and ownership of projects and processes should always be and stay where they belong.

 

2.    Budgeting;

 

This is usually a very strong and highly contested commitment for management. 

Usually a couple of versions for annual budgets are submitted and adjusted before approval.

Project budgets may have to be drawn up in addition or part of annual budgets.

Projects can be technical projects, like heavy checks / modifications, organisational projects for organisational changes, IT projects, regulatory projects in case regulations are enforced.

Innovation projects.

In the MRO business there is always a downward pressure on less high profile  budgets like facilities maintenance, tooling depreciation and replacement, equipment manufacturing and maintenance.

It is important to be realistic in budgeting and clearly indicate what organisational consequences are in case of budget cuts.2.    Project Management; 

Every organisation has to carry out projects (activities with a beginning and an end once project objectives are achieved). MRO activities consist mostly of projects so project budgeting and (assigned) project management are a very important part of the business.

Project preparation is paramount but most projects start off with a lot of unknowns.

That should not dissuade project management to draw certain lines for participants and meticulous prepare what ís controllable and reduce the unknowns as much as possible.

As with all management; visibility of prep & progress is paramount.

In the interest of brevity I will leave it at this, appreciating that there is much more to say about project management and the effects and requirement it has on the regular organisation.

 

3.    Operation economics;

Economics can be translated into productivity.

MRO’s deliver products that have safety as paramount quality but must be (internationally) competitive as well.

 

The popular slogan “safety is our number one priority” sounds great but has many ifs and buts.

Budgetary cuts do affect safety in a number of ways. Examples; reduction in training time, seeing training personnel as lost time, employing people with skills that have less training requirement (i.e. apprentices, unlicensed engineers, putting heavy burdens on licensed engineers). Employing contractors that must pay for their own training and tools.

 

Other examples are IT systems; there is much to says about added values and efficiency gains by IT systems and most importantly its proper use. Often decisions on the purchase of IT systems are made by management  that does not necessarily have sufficient knowledge of the use and possibilities and limitations of IT systems. We have seen many examples of “suboptimal IT system decisions. In order to optimise or spec an IT system, detailed knowledge and clarity of organisational processes is required. This sounds like a no brainer but is not always as clear cut as it should be.

 

Organisational Doctrine; a management Statement of the wall is one thing but living by it is another. The latter is extremely important as it can reinforce, but is also able to destroy the credibility of management on the shop floor. Regular management feedback to the work force is imperative. This must be a two way communication.

 

Activities that generate cash inflow must obviously have priorities. In particular in the MRO business but also in design organisations, the projects are the activities that generate revenue.

The more efficient these projects are prepared and executed the more revenues are generated.

 

4.    Information / Data Management;

Flow of information is crucial for processes to be executed properly. There is data that supports primary processes on the shop floor, like drawings, work instructions and material certificates but additional information like spent resources, purchases of material and services are important for management and accounting.

Used systems must always have an audit trail. Record keeping is another important feature that must be available and could potentially save cumbersome labour when properly set up.

Recently AI features make this even more efficient.

Integral IT systems have improved massively over the last decade and continue to be developed.

Although these systems, when properly implemented, data protection is something to carefully consider and will be always an item of scrutiny during authorities audits.

 

The risk is that system suppliers may cease to exist or raise their prices to such levels that economics dictate a change of system. This would require data migration from one system to another. These operations are usually extremely complex and costly and data migration is a process that needs to be meticulously prepared, timed and executed. 

It often requires retraining of users and modification of hardware structures.

 

5.    Human Factors and Management;

With all the modern and software management aids, human management is still one of the most, if not the most important management skill.

Even if all processes and projects are perfectly organised, if human management is not properly implemented, there are multiple risks.

Economic inefficiency by people that are unwilling or unable to cooperate.

Safety risks caused by complacency and lack of motivation. Even disgruntled employees can purposely sabotage safety.

A red flag of inadequate human management is high attrition rates of personnel.

Companies try to get a handle of this by conducting exit interviews. This is horribly retroactive and not expected to provide any insights.

In most organisations there is a balance of power of some sort. It is not necessarily hierarchical. There can be very powerful factors in the lower layers of the organisations.

In extreme cases these can paralyse the ability of management and be detrimental for the entire organisation. Usually the knee jerk reaction is hiring and firing and dominance of leadership which seldomly improves the situation.

It is imperative to get the lowdown on the grudges of personnel if they exists and address them.

From personal experience there are always constructive ideas in the silent corners of organisations. The most effective people in organisations are often the people that don’t stand out  and do their jobs without any noise.

In our humble opinion there are plenty opportunities in the world of modern management to distract from human management and neglect the humans in organisations with detrimental results.

To subcontract human management to HR (Human Resources) department would be a major mistake in our opinion. There must be a relation between operational and human management at all times in order to keep morale up and provide people with a  (psychological) safe working environment. From personal experience, we’ve seen many cases of behavioural mirroring; open minded behaviour at the top of the hierarchy, trickles down into the organisation, so does toxic behaviour. It’s important to lead by example.

 

Proposition

 

• Are there problems with IT implementation or projects?

• Is there a record of projects sliding habitually?

• Are there perpetual internal conflicts in the organisation?

• Are there conflicts with customers?

• Do you need management assistance?

• Are there new projects to be set up?

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Call us for help!