Documenting Processes in Continuing Airworthiness Organizations

Abstract

Activities in civil aviation organizations are affected by the growing number of requirements both from organizations’ customers as well as from regulatory authorities. The organizations are therefore encouraged to introduce and maintain an effective management system that will ensure achieving of desired objectives. In the area of continuing airworthiness there is a traditional approach to management represented by developing and maintaining organisation exposition, which is organised in accordance with guidelines provided by regulatory authorities. The expositions are therefore focused mostly on describing duties and responsibilities of organization’s departments instead of identifying processes from their inputs to outputs. We can say that the processes are hidden by organization structure creating barriers between individual departments. The issue described above can be addressed by implementing business process management approach which can be supported by number of software applications enabling the organization to clearly identify and organize its processes, workflow, responsibilities and finally its objectives including regulatory requirements to be met. This article introduces a brief methodology for implementing business process management in continuing airworthiness organizations using a commercially available business process modelling tools. By using the methodology the organization can create clear process documentation which can be distributed to all its employees showing their responsibilities in relation to company objectives and processes. With the business process management fully implemented and the approval of competent authority, the process documentation can supplement or even replace the traditional organization’s textual expositions, operations manuals or internal directives.