# Optimizing Aviation Maintenance through Algorithmic Approach of Real-Life Data
###### Abstract
Digital transformation in manufacturing is having a significant impact on various business models, including aircraft maintenance. Airline operators are improving their maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) processes using integrated digital platforms and data mining to drive operational efficiencies in areas such as parts usage, downtime, and service costs [9; 10; 11]. The term Aviation Maintenance 4.0 represents the use of information to achieve greater operational flexibility, reduce costs, and improve safety. The consolidation of data obtained from multiple sources via wireless connectivity enables effective monitoring of process performance, and this information can benefit MRO operations [12]. Commercial aircraft logistics and maintenance present many research challenges, primarily due to the complexity and sophistication of airline networks. Optimizing flight schedules, maximizing aircraft utilization, and minimizing aircraft and inventory maintenance costs are critical to competitiveness and profitability [13; 14; 15; 16]. The need to reduce operating costs is inevitable, as this industry is often characterized by low profit margins. An airline's resource management is usually conducted in several discrete phases that are continuously planned. There are four main optimization problems in the airline industry: flight planning, fleet management, crew planning, and aircraft maintenance [17; 18; 19]. After the flight planning, fleet management, and crew planning problems are solved, aircraft rotations must be planned so that each aircraft has sufficient space for maintenance. These four problems have been studied extensively over the past decades, but due to their complexity, some questions remain unanswered [20]. Solving and exploring global optimization problems gradually leads to locally sub-optimal solutions. Progressive approaches that integrate two different phases, such as flight network optimization and maintenance planning and management, have been used only to a limited extent [21; 22; 23; 24]. The problem of aircraft maintenance has attracted particular attention, primarily because of its direct impact on reducing operating costs. Indeed, maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) activities represent the core of an airline's cost structure, and account for about 10% of an airline's total operating costs [25]. The basic problem of aircraft maintenance is that after a certain number of flight cycles, each aircraft is taken to a station or maintenance center where the maintenance, repair, and overhaul work is carried out within the framework of the prescribed manufacturer's recommendations, the regulations of the aviation authorities, and the airline's internal guidelines [26]. The process is complicated by day-to-day factors such as flight delays, fleet options, aircraft utilization, or available capacity at individual maintenance stations. At the heart of the problem is the fact that aviation spare parts production is a high-tech, low-volume production that delivers large quantities of products to precise specifications, especially to order [27].