dc.description.abstract | With the development of the air transport industry and the introduction of low-cost carriers, the number of airlines has being growing rapidly. Based on the safety concerns and compliance of regulations, aircraft have to perform heavy maintenance periodically. When aircraft was taken out from services, it cost a lot to operators (airlines). If operator plans to do heavy maintenance by himself, the costs of investments of plant facilities, tools, and equipment are significant. Therefore, for some airlines and for the low-cost carriers, they outsources the heavy maintenance activities to other airlines’ maintenance departments or MROs (Maintenance, Repair, Overhaul organizations). The competition in the aircraft maintenance market is tough. To shorten the duration of heavy maintenance for improving the aircraft turnaround time will be the most important advantage in the market. This study is to analyze the operation practices of the maintenance department of the case company, including organizational structure, resources, and operational processes. In order to improve the efficiency, this paper compared two different types of organizational structures. One is a function-oriented organization, and the other is a project-oriented one. After analyzing, the results demonstrate that the project-oriented is more efficient than function-oriented structure. It reduces the useless waiting man-hours. As for the operational processes, the case company has being trying to introduce the critical chain project management (CCPM) concept to improve the progress of heavy maintenance project and release the suffers of uncertainty. Finally, taking an example to verify the analysis results and proposed methods by this study. Under the operating environment of a case company, it can reduce man-hours by around 10% and achieve the goal of improving efficiency. | en_US |