An ontology-based approach for aircraft maintenance task support

A relatively low level of digitalization in the maintenance domain, a reliance on legacy, paper-based work processes and systems and a lack of information exchange across stakeholders work together to complicate the consistent execution and record keeping of maintenance tasks. This has a negative effect on the efficiency and costs of product support and phase-out. This paper moves towards a ‘push-of-the-button’ digital solution for capturing and using aircraft maintenance task knowledge, processes and history to support maintenance execution and prove continued airworthiness compliance. It proposes the use of Enterprise Knowledge Resources – engineering task representations containing the required knowledge, process and outputs for a task – embedded within a semantic context model based on a Product-Process-Resource structure. A proof of concept application has been developed that incorporates a sample EKR within a knowledge management solution to support the capture, use and maintenance of the required elements for executing a specific maintenance task: the modification and detailed inspection of the main track downstop of the leading edge slats of the Boeing B737 aircraft. The developed system has the potential to improve the efficiency of maintenance task execution and record keeping. Future work includes extension of the proof of concept, such that it enables the user to automatically import knowledge from aircraft manufacturers as well as automatically record the results of maintenance task execution.