Anyone here familiar with how to manage a repair shop?

Our flight school has 20 aircraft and a hangar full of mechanics, but
nothing much seems to get fixed. Instead, you'll often find the
mechanics working on lawn mowers, boat motors, and painting minivans.

From: Greg Esres

It isn't rocket science just basic task and people management. You need some
way of accounting for time. You need to be able to schedule at least routine
maintenance tasks. Then you need the leadership to assign the right person to
the appropriate task and see that it gets done.

Someone needs to record hobbs readings everyday so that the status of every
aircraft in the fleet can be known in regards to the next servicing. That
information can go into a computer but even a large dry erase board with
columns and rows marked out is still a great way of seeing status at a glance.

You need parts and consumables, some in stock and some at most overnight
shipping away. So you don't need to stock a lot of stuff if you can afford
some down time.

You need some basic servicing tools. I have a huge box myself but routinely
only use about a quarter of it in GA maintenance, so you don't need as much as
you might think. But if I ever go back to production, or airlines, or avionics
installation I won't need to buy more. You will need a few aircraft specific
special tools but a lot can be made from diagrams in the maintenance manuals in
most aircraft.

I knew of a guy who took the job of turning around an operation like you
describe. He started out establishing a second shift in order to get more
utilization out of the facility. The second shift walked in one day and said
they didn't like it and would work days instead. He fired them all on the
spot. The remaining mechanics got the message and within weeks they went from
one or two aircraft available to a two dozen.

The point is that ultimately someone needs to kick a little tail and light a
fire under the mechs. They probably have great excuses about lousy pay or not
enough parts or support but in the end they are paid to fix planes not lawn
mowers.

John Dupre'