GAMTA has launched a benchmarking study to determine the standards of service and prices offered by maintenance organisations in other parts of the world. The study, to be run on lines similar to a 1996 report on the competition UK flying training organisations faced from foreign schools, will attempt to learn lessons from maintenance companies outside aviation, such as in the motor and yachting industries.
The intention, says GAMTA, is to report on "...anything we find compared with overseas operations which affects our competitiveness...[the report] should enable our organisations to review their practices." During the economic recession of the early 1990s, GAMTA notes, "...people hawked their aircraft around the cheapest shops", with price the main determinant of where the work was placed. The results will soon be coming home to roost for the aircraft owners, GAMTA believes, stating that the standards of service expected will rise as times become more prosperous.
GAMTA hopes that the benchmarking process will enable a code of practice to be drawn up, and that the confidence which it believes this may engender in customers could be used as a marketing tool to persuade them to go to GAMTA-registered companies.
The maintenance-benchmarking team is expected to make its report before the end of 1997.
Source: Flight International
