In-House Repair Documentation Template

[edmeister]

We are revising our IN-House Engineering Documentation so that we can make use of Electronic signatures / graphic capabilities & move away from hand sketches. An attempt to move towards the 21st Century technology.

I would like to open up discussions of what works & what can be improved upon. Our company is an algomation of several airlines & various procedures that nobody dared to question that consumes time in repetition or 'no-benefit' - type activities. (such a listing the 1 & always 1 drawing# in Table 3)

My concept of the Ultimate IN-House Engrg Template consists of 3 sections.

SECTION 1/ Approval page that references that repair drawing / brief discription of the repair / check boxes for various regulatory requirements / signature block & Document #.

SECTION 2/ Self contained drawing (preferably letter size) with illustrations / procedure with references / BoM / & revision Block.

SECTION 3/ Substantiation (not issued with Doc to Floor) that contains the Engineering analysis & reference material.

What other formats are out there that work (or in some cases - should be avoided)?

 

[bf109g]

Sounds like you're on the right track. My last assignment before I quit my previous airline job was to come up with something similar to what you're talking about. Unfortunately, our FAA liaison group threw engineering under the bus and let FSDO dictate the configuration and content of an engineering document. That's right, FSDO inspectors who had no engineering background dictating what an engineer can and cannot do. All that was done with little to no consultation with their brothers at the ACO.

One of the major heartaches was standardization of major/minor repair determination across the airline. That involved creation of several flowcharts and lots of back and forth on what would be considered a major repair. From a structures standpoint, those determinations were relatively straightforward. Classifying repairs to avionics/systems items created lots of discussion and disagreement.

Needless to say, that experience had a major impact on my decision to leave the airline world. The crux of the matter is that engineers at that airline have been turned into clerks. Sounds like you don't have that problem.

 

[chief52]

I am very interested to hear how you make out with electronic signatures. Printed paper with actual pen signatures leads to a lot of photocopying and delays in distributing the repair data to who really needs it, the techs on the floor.

What software are you planning on using for this?

Our existing templates (regional airline / military MRO)here are very similar in format to what you propose (Sections 1,2 and 3). We have everything for each repair in one Word document. A cover page having sign offs, approval basis (major / minor), repair limitations (generic/ SN specific), and a brief desctiption is followed by detailed repair instructions and figures (generated in CAD and pasted into the document). We put analysis / substantiation in an appendix that does not get distributed to the shop personnel.

We use the same document no matter who the approving authority is (Transpost Canada / FAA, military authority).

Works well for us.