Kaizen and stochastic networks support the investigation of aircraft failures

Investigating the causes of aircraft failures and preventing their reoccurrence are crucial to achieving and maintaining a high flight safety level; technical failure-analysis teams usually perform these functions. We developed and applied a dual-phased process to improve the investigative procedures that these teams use. In the first phase we used a Kaizen method to reconstruct the investigation process. In the second phase we created a simulation model of the resulting stochastic processing network to evaluate alternative configurations. The results indicated a significant improvement in throughput time and investigation quality. In addition, this unique improvement process could be adapted for use by the many organizations that concurrently run several types of jobs (or projects) in a stochastic and dynamic environment.