by Joel Ferreira (TAP Portugal Airline)
Prediction, as part of the broader concept condition-based maintenance, is something that is being explored as never before in several industries, as machine learning and artificial intelligence expand their reach at a hypersonic pace.
In aircraft maintenance we have been exploring the potential of this concept for a long time, but we have been having difficulties in realising all the potential that it brings to the smarter planning of our activities because, among other reasons, our industry is heavily regulated and the regulation does not yet allow enough flexibility to accommodate properly predictive maintenance in airline and MRO daily operations.
ReMAP challenges the current state of regulation for aircraft maintenance and explores innovative ways to keep the high safety standards uphold by the current regulation while also creating room to introduce flexibility which will enable aircraft operators to take advantage of condition-based maintenance to optimise aircraft availability, dramatically reduce technically-induced operational interruptions and take the best out of aircraft components by reducing to the very minimum their Remaining Useful Life.
This project represents a cornerstone to the industry and if successful will certainly represent a turning point in the way predictive maintenance is perceived and regulated in the aeronautical industry.
1st International Conference for CBM in Aerospace:
I highly appreciate the continuation of this research that results in this 1st conference entirely dedicated to the topic of Condition-based Maintenance (CBM) in the aerospace domain https://cbmacademy.eu. That’s why I support this initiative by being a member of the Technical Committee. I am happy to invite you all to send in your papers for this conference. The abstract submission is open until Nov 26th 2021.
Joel Ferreira:
Joel works for TAP Air Portugal as an innovation manager in the maintenance and engineering business unit of the company. In his current role he manages TAP’s innovation projects portfolio, the interface with industry, universities, Scientific institutions and start-ups and supervises projects’ execution. He previously coordinated AIRMES http://www.airmes-project.eu , an EU-funded project on aircraft maintenance optimisation.