In both the Commercial and Defense Aviation industries it is a requirement that a part certification form be issued to document that an object which has been repaired, maintained or overhauled is in a serviceable status and that the repair, maintenance or overhaul process has been carried out in accordance with the appropriate rules and regulations. Such part certification forms must be signed by duly authorized personnel and stored physically and/or electronically with the object for future references.
There are different part certification forms used depending on the authority governing the business area in which the MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul) organization operates, the type of object and repair, maintenance or overhaul that has been carried out, and the different requirements each authority may have for the management of such part certification forms. It is possible to define which airworthiness regulation codes are valid for a certain form type, in accordance with ATA Spec2000 requirements.
Each maintenance organization can hold approval for issuing a number of different types of part certification forms. These approvals can be issued by an authority, whether national (of the country of the organization or any other country) or international (e.g., EASA, the European Aviation Safety Agency). Each authority can issue several approvals to a certain maintenance organization or site.
The approval can be for different types of objects or for a single type of object, and it can be for any level of work to be carried out. It is also possible to record the current state of an approval by using the available Status feature. The valid statuses can be used to indicate whether the approval certificate is pending approval, approved, rejected or obsolete. Since it is possible to reapply an obsolete approval, the Status feature provides support to move the obsolete approval back to either the approval pending or approved statuses provided that all data is valid. Note that only certificates that are in the Approved status will be valid for generation. Following is a diagram of the relationships between the different approval statuses:
A scheduled task is set up to execute everyday at midnight to check the validity of an approval certificate. When executed, the task will check whether the Valid To date on the approval has been reached (or is devoid of a value), in which case the approval will be set to the Obsolete status.
The capability lists that are received together with a approval certificate can be recorded on the approval. The capability list refers to the list of parts that the maintenance organization is allowed to work on under a certain approval.
The relevant authorities authorize an organization to perform different types of work on certain objects (e.g., airframes, engines, propellers). These authorities are also responsible for authorizing the personnel (e.g., mechanics, technicians, inspectors) that will approve the work done. A maintenance organization must have one or more designated approvers who are authorized to sign a part certificate. Note that an employee cannot be defined as an authorized approver for the same company more than once. The types of part certification forms an MRO organization can issue are determined by these authorizations.
When a component (serial part or batch tracked part) is received from an external source, it has to go through a Quality Assurance (QA) process. Part of this process involves verifying that the component's status is properly documented, i.e., verify the part certification form. Functionality exists to register the certificate details directly on the serial part or batch tracked part records as well as to connect the actual certificate, which can be received in either paper format or electronic (XML) format, to the certificate object. The registered certificate details will be connected to the relevant part serial catalog or the lot batch master records.
If the part certificate is received from the supplier in paper format, it is required to scan the certificate document and save it as a PDF file before it can be stored in IFS Document Management. Once this is done, you can use the Documents feature in the Attachments panel to connect the document to the certificate object. If the certificate is received from the supplier in electronic format, the XML file can be saved directly on the certificate object as a connected document, after registering the certificate details.
In addition to handling the part certificates that are received from external sources, functionality exists to create part certificates in-house for components and aircrafts after a maintenance action has been completed and the product or part is ready to be returned to service. These certificates can be generated from maintenance orders, work orders and complex assembly work orders that are in the Work Done, Reported or Finished statuses. The part certificates can be issued for a single serialized component, a single non serialized component, a defined set of serialized components or for a batch of components. Components in this context include both assemblies and vehicles.
When generating a part certificate for a particular maintenance order or work order for the first time, the Print Release to Service assistant will open. The assistant consists of several steps where you need to enter required information for the certificate. The information entered in the assistant will be used to create the part certificate the first time it is generated. For maintenance orders, you can also choose to print the part certification form together with other release to service documentation at the time of generation. Note that you will not be able to change or create a new part certificate for the maintenance order once the first certificate is generated. You can however reprint the part certificate as many times as you need, although the content will be the same.
The generated part certificate can be stored in IFS Document Management and connected to the part certificate. The object property PART_CERT_DOC_CLASS can be used to define the default document class to use when storing the generated XML and PDF files for part certificates in IFS Document Management.
As part of the generation process (i.e., prior to the actual form being generated) the system will validate that all work on the order is either completed or canceled and that there are no overdue tasks for the serials in the VIM serial structure after which it will set the operational condition of the serial structure to Operational.
