A General Model Based Engineering Approach to MRO Business Software Applications Using Acme

Maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) services are an expanding market, which is expected to cross $61 billion in 2017. The market is expected to grow to about 28,000 aircraft by 2018. IT and software solutions should be at the heart of the automation and the optimization of such promising and sensitive industry. However, there is no generally-accepted software architecture to facilitate the MRO operations. The industry is dependent on architectures which are mostly propriety and have varying success and acceptance. A general MRO architecture could be of great significance, as modern aircrafts have a long life expectancy that can exceed 30 years, and definitely will need routine/none-routine MRO operations over their lifespan. Due to which, there is a growing need for a well-defined architecture to help reduce the costs, and standardize the overall MRO operations. Therefore, the goal of the stream of this research is to define and formalize a generalized software-solution architecture for MROs. This study proposes a general Client-Cloud architecture, reflecting the main MRO functional and quality requirements to enhance the business's overall performance and success. The study also made an effort to formally define the model, introduced by the proposed architecture, using Acme as an ADL
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Architecture Description Language. This could lower the level of ambiguity and enhance the identification of the systems' components.