A novel approach for No Fault Found decision-making

Within aerospace and defence sectors, organisations are adding value to their core corporate offerings through services. These services tend to emphasise the potential to maintain future revenue streams and improved profitability and hence require the establishment of cost effective strategies that can manage uncertainties within value led services e.g. maintenance activities. In large organisations, decision-making is often supported by information processing and decision aiding systems; it is not always apparent whose decision affects the outcome the most. Often, accountability moves away from the designated organisation personnel in unforeseen ways, and depending on the decisions of individual decision makers, the structure of the organisation, or unregulated operating procedures may change. This can have far more effect on the overall system reliability – leading to inadequate troubleshooting, repeated down-time, reduced availability and increased burden on Through-life Engineering Services.

This paper focuses on outlining current industrial attitudes regarding the No Fault Found (NFF) phenomena and identifies the drivers that influence the NFF decision-making process. It articulates the contents of tacit knowledge and addresses a knowledge gap by developing NFF management policies. The paper further classifies the NFF phenomenon into five key processes that must be controlled by using the developed policies. In addition to the theoretical developments, a Petri net model is also outlined and discussed based on the captured information regarding NFF decision-making in organisations. Since NFF decision-making is influenced by several factors, Petri nets are sought as a powerful tool to realise a meta-model capability to understand the complexity of situations. Its potential managerial implications can help describe decision problems under conditions of uncertainty. Finally, the conclusions indicate that engineering processes, which allow decision-making at various maintenance echelons, can often obfuscate problems that then require a systems approach to illustrate the impact of the issue.