Toulouse Blagnac Airport: ensuring the maintenance of a major airport platform

Toulouse Blagnac Airport is the 6th French airport in terms of passenger traffic.

In 2019, and prior to the crisis in the airline industry, more than 9.5 million passengers passed through Toulouse-Blagnac Airport. Aéroport Toulouse Blagnac (ATB), in charge of site management, is responsible for the maintenance, development and optimization of airport facilities. In order to guarantee efficient service to passengers, airlines and companies located on the premises, ATB ensures the maintenance of all infrastructures thanks to a dedicated team of 63 people.

Back in the 2000, in order to optimize the organization and efficiency of maintenance services, the airport was equipped with the CARL Source Facility CMMS software, a requirement for the company’s maintenance teams, who have experienced considerable growth in just a few years.

CMMS serving maintenance technicians.

Initially made up of seven technicians, ATB’s maintenance team operated thanks to a paper-based organization and an internal tool. Implementation of numerous safety standards in the airline and airport industry made it necessary to acquire a CMMS tool, in order to:

Define preventive maintenance ranges and reference all available equipment,

Reorganize the maintenance operations assigned to its four teams (electromechanics, electro-computing, automation, and infrastructure),

Manage maintenance through performance indicators, and through planning of operations and technician schedules.

Toulouse Blagnac Airport: a major airport hub

Deployment of the CARL Source Facility CMMS

In 2000, the CARL Source Facility software was deployed by Toulouse Blagnac Airport. According to Christophe Gras, Maintenance Manager, “the CMMS interface and logic on the CARL side is clear and easy to use”. The editor’s expertise in the airport sector allowed the maintenance teams to organize the multiple equipment units on a custom tree structure.

50 maintenance technicians and daily users of the software are trained in the use and customization of the solution. Up to 20 people can place service call requests and the technicians with the Vinci HVAC service provider can record all of their operations in the software. The CARL Source Facility CMMS solution is therefore at the heart of airport activity, whether in the management of electrical power, luggage transit, aircraft docking systems, or even passenger checkpoint lines.

« What I like about CARL Source Facility: the activity is supported by the system, not by the people. »

Christophe Gras, Maintenance Manager

Results on maintenance management

CARL Source Facility has made it possible to unify the organization of the maintenance operations, to track all service calls, and to add performance indicators useful for optimizing equipment management. Significant time was saved by the teams, in particular thanks to the introduction of preventive maintenance based on manufacturer data. ATB is fully committed to a maintenance 4.0 approach integrating IoT technology and CARL Source CMMS. Objective: Totrigger predictive service calls based on data from IoT sensors, analyzed and processed on CARL Source, and service various equipment before failure occurs.

“In addition to the time saved by the teams, CARL Source has made it possible to improve the reliability of our 6,000 pieces of equipment and to contribute to the overall productivity of the airport,” confides Christophe Gras. All of the 10,000 items stored in the warehouses are never out of stock thanks to automatic replenishment, based on actual consumption and supplier lead times. Toulouse Blagnac Airport also plans to automate Socotec regulatory inspections via CARL Source’s Control-S platform, which is dedicated to the integration of regulatory data transmitted by certified connectors.