• Home
• Coffee With
• News
• Maintenance Provider of Choice

Maintenance Provider of Choice

04/09/2015 by Aviation Times

ABS Jets shows a tremendous increase of 148% in 2014 profits by its Technical Department. At many companies in various industries, growth in revenues and profits is attributed to a favorable market. However throughout Europe, we have seen debt crisis, austerity measures, and geopolitical unrest. What are the reasons that ABS Jets is doing so well, I wondered? In the board room of ABS Jets in that overlooks the runway of Prague Airport, I sat together with Vladimir Petak, CEO and Member of the Board and Thierry Barré, the Technical Director of ABS Jets for an interview.

“ABS Jets has a more sustainable approach. We all know that an aircraft sitting on the ground because of maintenance doesn’t generate revenue and it also lessens the overall readiness to have aircraft operational for an assignment,” Thierry Barré says, opening the discussion. “We have significantly reduced the aircraft ground time without compromising excellence in quality. It makes ABS Jets’ maintenance services stand out and being the best means being less vulnerable to the impact of trends.”

ABS Jets is implementing a Lean Maintenance program according to the Japanese ‘Kaizen’ principles. The application of this Lean philosophy leads to increases in operational performance and the continuous improvement through the elimination of non-value-added activities on the shop floor, as well as reducing inventory, floor space, and productivity in the back shops. The word Kaizen means “continuous improvement”. It comes from the Japanese words 改 (“kai”) which means ‘change’ or ‘to correct’ and 善 (“zen”) which means ‘good’. A common attitude in maintenance and repairs is ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’ The Kaizen philosophy is to ‘improve it even if it isn’t broken’. The simple reasoning behind it is that if one doesn’t improve, one cannot compete with those who do.

“We have also noticed that Kaizen is a philosophy that motivates our people to constantly improve their surroundings,” comments Vladimir Petak. “Empowering our workers contributes to greater efficiency at ABS Jets. Since they are part of the process of making suggestions and sharing their ideas, they feel appreciated that their ideas were welcomed and thus have a strong sense of pride in the difference they make.” The availability of effective training programs, is essential to ABS Jet’s overall performance. The company makes considerable investments in continuous education and training of its employees. In the Technical Department alone, the investment in training was increased by 134% in 2014. Is there a correlation between this number and the profit increase of 148% in this department?

Thierry Barré responds: “We are creating a culture that drives learning and continuous improvement. Our team possesses more problem-solving skills are better prepared to succeed in an increasingly competitive environment. I see my already highly skilled team looking for new process approaches to reach better results. It doesn’t mean to be faster but rather to be more efficient and more effective. The payoff is less cost, increased quality, shortened cycles and improved customer lead times. We have turned our maintenance processes into models of streamlined efficiency”.

ABS Jets was originally known as an aircraft charter and management company. Over the years ABS Jets has expanded its departmental activities as service provider to third parties. For instance, it’s OCC – Operations and Control Center is now handling complete trip planning assignments for clients as far as the Americas and China and trips to very challenging destinations such as Nepal with its extremely difficult airport infrastructure.

In 2014, the ABS Jets Technical Department increased the number of technical service projects by 19% and the milestone of annual 50,000 man-hours of work has been exceeded. The significant maintenance revenue increase suggest a growing clientele and additional assignments for a good reason: a growing list of international certifications and authorizations.

“ABS Jets is an approved certified service center for specific types of Embraer aircraft and a key player for the Embraer Legacy support in the EMEA region. We are a Honeywell Authorized Service Center,” Thierry lists. “Lately, we were authorized by Russian aviation authorities for maintenance of all Russian (RA) registered aircraft. It is an opportunity to prove that ABS Jets values the relationship with all Russian aircraft owners and operators regardless whether their planes RA registered or not. The most recent maintenance certification came for the Gulfstream G550. The technical performance of our service center as well as our important customer portfolio are recognized by these certifications.”

ABS Jets is also authorized to perform maintenance for aircraft registered in Aruba (P4), the United Arab Emirates (A6), the Cayman Islands & Bermuda (VP), the Isle of Man (M), Ukraine (UR), Turkey (TC) and all EASA countries. ABS JETS provides dedicated daily maintenance support -Line Maintenance and AOG recovery- as well as more complex technical and repair services -Base Maintenance- for its managed aircraft and all third party customers.

Maintenance operations account for up to 18 percent of the fleet of any aircraft operator’s total operating costs. There is no way around it that aircraft need to undergo scheduled maintenance. ABS Jets has proven that it is able to keep those costs low by improving the throughput in the hangar and keeping the ground time at a minimum. The company is becoming the maintenance provider of choice for a growing number of operators and aircraft owners.

Cdr. Bud Slabbaert