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The case study is focused on the application of principal quality tools in a fourth generation jet fighter to evaluate a maintenance activity in an accident investigation process. The paper assesses aircraft engineers’ performance on checking aircraft tyre inflation pressure before the aircraft’s flight. Process evaluation is organized by the application of fundamental quality tools in order to provide vital information regarding the level of control. The methodology combines the benefits of statistical quality control, root cause determination, and preventive actions, to eliminate maintenance discrepancy in the future. The methodology revealed an approach to generate useful safety metrics from incident reporting data. Furthermore, this study pointed out the significance of participation at all technician levels for the successful implementation of Total Quality Management (TQM). Also, it discusses the value of TQM in aviation and suggests that continuous improvement is still needed. The paper is based on practical work being undertaken in a military squadron and, therefore, is demonstrated to be practical in an aviation environment. This study would encourage aviation personnel to rely on TQM methods for performing quality assessment monitoring and achieving continuous improvement.

The purpose of this paper is to broaden the application of Total Quality Management principles on maintenance issues for modern jet fighters as an attempt to further predict, improve and confirm reliability enhancement on critical aircraft systems, sub-systems or components. The proposed methodology is focused on the identification of under-performing maintenance cycles by instituting a reliability assessment study emanating from past fault detection data. Frontline TQM tools are utilized such as Pareto analysis, Cause and Effect diagrams and FMEA in order to recognize the vital few aircraft systems/components that are more prone to causing high-occurrence malfunctions. Thus, by instituting preventive control on selected systems/components eventually leads to ameliorating maintenance process scheduling. The outcome of this study may aid in proposing a more scientific platform, by relying on TQM methodologies, for programming maintenance initiatives in a combat-ready Air Force squadron.

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