Study on maintenance contribution to Life Cycle Costs: Aircraft Auxiliary Power Unit example

Maintenance activities in corporate organizations represent a significant part of the Life Cycle Costs of the organization´s assets. This paper presents a study that was conducted to investigate the maintenance contribution to the overall life cycle of equipment. The practical example that was used for this investigation the Axililary Power Unit (APU) of Boing 737. Also, this paper presents a detailed review of the scheduled and unscheduled maintenance costs of the APU. This review was conducted to study the scheduled and un-scheduled maintenance in order to determine the alternate maintenance procedures. The study has shown that cost of maintenance per operating hour of auxiliary power units removed within recommended limits and those that remain installed past this time show no significant variation. Criteria have been established for the monitoring of future repairs and maintenance decisions.