Patent ID: 6742000
Filing Date: 2004-05-25
Classification: B64F,G06F,G06Q,Y10S

Abstract:
A method for developing a maintenance program for a system, comprising:a. initially defining a definition of said system, wherein said definition is hierarchical in nature and defined in terms of aircraft systems, aircraft subsystems and aircraft components, said aircraft systems, aircraft subsystems and aircraft components identified according to said aircraft systems', aircraft subsystems' and aircraft components' function, functional failure, failure effect and failure cause, where said definition is stored as data within at least one database; b. identifying potential failures of said system according to said definition by allowing a user to select portions of data from said at least one database; c. categorizing said failure effect through a predefined logic progression according to at least one category selected from a group consisting essentially of Evident Safety, Evident Operation, Evident Economic, Hidden Safety, and Hidden Non-Safety; d. identifying maintainability and reliability data for said aircraft components, said data including predicted mean time between failure (MTBF), predicted mean time between unscheduled removals (MTBUR), historical MTBF and historical MTBUR; e. identifying tasks which may eliminate or reduce the possibility of said potential failure occurring and detecting hidden failures that have occurred; f. selecting said tasks based on applicability and effectiveness; g. automatically updating said system in response to at least one user request, said at least one user request comprising at least one of a system operation, a subsystem operation, and a parts operation; h. iteratively refining said tasks in response to said at least one user request and automatically updating said system; and i. providing a maintenance program comprised of said tasks to at least one users; wherein said maintenance program is used to eliminate or reduce the occurrence of failures by determining said tasks for scheduled maintenance or intervals related to standards set by regulatory authorities, equipment operators, or manufacturers and wherein said updates are performed in real-time and said updates are immediately available for system or user purposes, thereby a group of users can meet to discuss a proposed change to said maintenance program to update said proposed change, run an analysis on said proposed change, review an output of said analysis, and finalize said proposed change to said maintenance program during a single meeting.