DatcoMedia

In 1998, Michael Lentini bought a FBO that was losing about $5,000.00 a month. He became painfully aware that the aircraft maintenance industry has been plagued with an onslaught of paperwork that was generally making the physical “work” of repairing an aircraft pale in comparison. It is not uncommon, on small repairs, for the paperwork and administration aspect of the job to take as long, or longer, than the repair itself. Lentini found people writing the same items over and over again long hand then giving to someone else to enter the same info into a computer system again.
In order to meet the demands of the Federal Aviation Administration, he needed to not only order parts from his vendors, but had to also perform an incoming inspection to ascertain the validity of the parts (that oil filter is, in fact, an oil filter), receive the part into inventory, log the cure date if the part expires and periodically inventory the parts room to make sure he did not lose precious stock. Lentini also needed to maintain a file of invoices for the parts he had sold, so that eight months in the future, when a customer’s vacuum pump failed, he could figure out where it was purchased and handle the warranty claim.
On the shop floor, the mechanics needed to greet the customer that required work performed on their aircraft, grab a work order form and write down what the customer wanted, fill out a parts order form to give to the parts department, and perform the repairs to the aircraft. Each mechanic was required to write down the corrective actions that he performed on the work order and, when the aircraft was done, get the paperwork to the parts department to make sure that the parts used were billed out.
When the parts department had audited and completed their portion of the paperwork packet, it was then routed to the front office, where the packet was audited by the Director of Maintenance, who would verify that the parts used have the associated tags and form 8130’s, verify that the work was signed off using the correct verbiage, verify that parts needed for the repairs were actually billed on the work order, and ascertain that the mechanic that performed the work also signed off the work in accordance with the Repair Station manual.
At this point a log book entry could be typed up for the work and inserted in the aircraft’s appropriate log book and the paperwork packet was then routed to the billing clerk so that an invoice can be generated from the work order. Parts sheets were reviewed to determine what stock was used on the job, timecards were reviewed to determine how much labor along with the correct labor rate that should be on the invoice, and then FINALLY, the customer can be billed.