MRO companies strive to stay competitive Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) companies constantly strive to stay competitive and respond to the increasing demand for short and predictable air-craft turnaround times. As they work towards shorter and better controlled aircraft down times and lower maintenance costs, they have identified process op-timization as the key element for innovation in this area. MRO companies are therefore looking for op-tions to organize their work as efficiently as possible. This study focuses on Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in MRO. These companies are important for the Dutch aviation industry, but they lack the financial and data resources of the larger companies. Lean processes are an essential part of increasing deliv-ery reliability and shortening lead times. However, the aircraft maintenance process is always characterised by unpredictable process times and material require-ments. Lean business methodologies are unable to change this fact. This problem is often compensated for by large buffers in terms of time, personnel and parts, leading to an expensive and inefficient process.Using data analytics to improve performance In order to tackle this problem of unpredictability, large aviation companies (as is the case in several other types of industries) have initiated projects to apply ‘data analytics’ to improve their maintenance process. In theory, data analytics have a predictive value for the maintenance process as a whole and the actual need for the maintenance of separate components.