Design Considerations for CAMCOS--A Computer-Assisted Maintenance Planning and Control System.

A description of CAMCOS, an online real-time computer system for Air Force base-level maintenance planning and control activities. CAMCOS is designed to provide a high-level capability for critical missions and economical performance during routine operations. A mission generator helps to select an aircraft to fulfill a sortie request, and sends the dispatch notices to ready it for its mission. The system handles planning, scheduling, dispatching, and control for flight-line, bench, and periodic maintenance on a unified basis that relates maintenance to operational requirements. The current states of all resources, workload, and aircraft are maintained in the system. An event monitor follows all flight-line jobs and other critical tasks, notifying the appropriate manager if a departure from plan occurs. Job requirements for reported malfunctions and other priority work are matched against resources, and scheduled to meet aircraft recovery targets. Personnel in maintenance squadrons report work requirements; events such as start and end of job; and changes in resource availability through the control system. These data are used for planning and controlling the maintenance activity and are saved by the system for subsequent analysis and reporting. 67 pp. Ref.