Technical publications

Technical publications contain information, such as airworthiness directives or customer service notices, from vendors, manufacturers, and regulatory agencies. Technical publications can trigger maintenance events and affect work planning forecasts.

The Technical Publications application stores technical publications from manufacturers, vendors, regulatory agencies, and others. Technical publications can have complex criteria to define which aircraft they affect. The Technical Publications application tracks the following information:

When you create a technical publication, you can specify whether an upgrade is applied to multiple aircraft. Typically, software items are updated in this manner. You can upgrade all the software within the top-level aircraft at the same time, including the child aircraft that are in build positions that are defined on the technical publication.

Multiple maintenance plans, each with an associated job card, can be created for a technical publication. Each maintenance plan is used to create a task card for each affected aircraft. The task cards are used to create work orders to implement the requirements of the technical publication. When you specify a maintenance plan for a technical publication, you can optionally select to automatically complete all associated maintenance plans. By using this option, when any individual work order is completed, all task cards that are generated from the technical publication for a particular aircraft are automatically completed. If you choose not to automatically complete all associated maintenance plans, you avoid deactivating associated maintenance plans, and each task card work order must be completed individually. You can also select to complete all associated maintenance plans before the method of compliance is reported for each of the associated aircraft.

When you specify a maintenance plan for a technical publication, you can define a range of frequency iterations so that regulatory compliance is maintained. A frequency iteration defines how many times inspections are completed to comply with the requirements of the technical publication.

On the Maintenance Plan tab, you can define and view frequency iterations by clicking Frequency Iterations. When you create a frequency iteration, you can specify whether the task card is deactivated when the last frequency iteration is completed. You can change whether the task card is deactivated only during the last frequency iteration. If you add iterations during the last iteration, the check box for deactivated the task cards after the last frequency iteration is set to read-only.

A frequency iteration can be time-based or meter-based. You have flexibility in defining a frequency iteration, and iterations can occur at different intervals. For example, you can define a frequency iteration that consists of three meter-based iterations: the first inspection occurs every 10,000 miles for two iterations. The second inspection occurs at 25,000 miles for three iterations, and the third inspection occurs at every 50,000 miles. You can also define alert and warning intervals for each frequency iteration.

Technical publications include the following types of records from manufacturers, vendors, and regulatory agencies:

Technical publications are managed at the part set level because technical records are associated with models and configuration-managed parts. When you create a technical publication, you can specify an organization and a site to further limit the applicability of the technical record. For example, you can opt not to specify the site and organization so that the technical record applies to the entire part set. If if the technical publication applies only to the aircraft that are stored at a single site, you can specify that site so that the technical publication has limited applicability.

You can add a terminating action to a technical publication. A terminating action defines a condition that is required in order for a recurring inspection to be terminated, for example, a certain level of physical wear is recorded. Terminating actions are useful because not every requirement in a technical publication can be reduced to a series of programmable statements. Terminating records ensure compliance with the requirements of the technical record.

You can track design changes and requirements by relating technical records. A related technical publication can provide information, define a relationship that requires action when maintenance events occur, or define a relationship to a modification record. Relating a technical record to a modification record creates a complete record of the engineering design standard.

Enterprises typically must maintain and report the status of their technical publications to external regulatory agencies.

Examples of using technical publications

The records department of your enterprise receives a new bulletin, directive, notice, or other type of publication. This publication might come from a manufacturer, vendor, regulatory body, or another authorized department in the enterprise. You create a technical publication to document the new information and attach any supporting electronic documentation. You establish criteria to identify the aircraft that are affected by the technical publication. Criteria can include position, part number, serial number range, models, or configurations of models. You can create initial task cards, job cards, and possibly follow-up task cards that establish work requirements. You can also enter task card actions to define the interaction among task cards. Other technical records might deactivate the task cards.

If your records department receives a new bulletin, directive, notice, or other publication that supersedes an existing technical publication. You define the superseding technical record. Then, you open the superseded technical record and change it to point to the superseding technical publication. The status of the superseded technical publication is changed from Active to Superseded.

Your enterprise receives a new aircraft and decides that it is a configuration-managed aircraft. You create an aircraft record for it and designate it as configuration-managed. The build data interpreter identifies the technical publications that the new aircraft must comply with task cards and any work orders that are necessary to initiate the compliance process are generated for any technical publications that the new aircraft must comply with.

A regulatory body or an internal audit department notifies your enterprise that it plans to investigate the incorporation status of one or more technical publications. You create a report to identify the compliance of aircraft that are associated with the applicable technical publications.

Parent topic: Creating technical publications