Turnaround Time – What Actually Determines How Fast Work Gets Done?

TAT is the number everyone asks about. It is also one of the most misunderstood metrics in component maintenance. Margus Graf, Workshop Manager at Magnetic MRO, explains what actually sits behind the figure – and why the real work often starts after the component is opened.

Ask an operator what matters most in component maintenance, and turnaround time will come up quickly. It is the metric that gets quoted, compared, and negotiated. It is also, as Margus Graf points out, based on an assumption that does not always hold.

“TAT is typically based on standard maintenance tasks,” he explains. “But more often than not, the actual scope of work is only confirmed after disassembly and inspection.”

That distinction matters more than it might seem. A quoted turnaround time reflects the work everyone expects to do. What nobody knows – until the component is opened and inspected – is whether that expectation matches reality.

Three Things Decide How Fast It Goes. You Can Only See One of Them.

Unexpected findings are a routine part of the component maintenance process, and they change everything downstream.

“Unexpected findings can require additional repairs, labour, or non-standard parts, which may have long lead times,” says Graf. A component that arrives looking like a straightforward workscope can, once inspected, require engineering support, specialised tooling, and material that is not sitting on a shelf anywhere nearby.

According to Margus, the speed of any workscope comes down to three things: the initial condition of the component, the extent of what inspection reveals, and the availability of the parts needed to return it to service. The first is partly visible in advance. The second and third are not.

It’s Rarely One Thing That Goes Wrong

There is a common assumption that delays in a workshop come from a single point of failure – a missing part, a documentation issue, a capacity crunch. The reality is less tidy.

“The most common bottlenecks occur when a repair requires resources beyond those originally planned,” Graf explains. Standard maintenance tasks are scheduled around expected labour, materials, tooling, and workshop capacity. When inspection expands the scope, all of those inputs need to expand with it – extra technician hours, specialised tooling, engineering support, non-standard parts.

“The greatest challenge is often securing these additional resources while maintaining the planned turnaround time without compromising quality.”

That is the tension at the centre of workshop management. Not speed versus quality in the abstract, but the practical question of how to absorb an unplanned increase in scope without letting either slip.

You Don’t Go Faster by Rushing

The pressure to turn work around quickly is constant. Margus is unambiguous about what that pressure cannot be allowed to do.

“In aviation, speed should never come at the expense of quality or safety. Every repair must comply with approved maintenance data and regulatory requirements.”

The answer, in his view, is not to compress the work. It is to remove everything around the work that slows it down.

“The key to achieving both speed and quality is not by cutting corners, but by improving planning, workflow, and resource management.”

In practice, that means efficient production planning, experienced technicians who can assess and act quickly, tooling and materials that are available when needed rather than sourced reactively, and clear communication throughout – with the customer as much as within the workshop.

The Number Is Only as Good as What Sits Behind It

A turnaround time is a planning figure built on the information available at the time it is given. 

What determines whether it is met is everything that happens after the component is opened: how quickly additional findings are identified, how fast the resources to address them can be secured, and how well the workshop absorbs the change without cutting into quality.

The numbers matter, but it is what sits behind them that decides whether the numbers mean anything at all.