Pratt & Whitney Canada took a bold risk when it committed to production of the new PW600 engine model for the Cessna Mustang and the Eclipse 500 very light jets. To make this program work, which involves designing, building, and servicing a new engine that will cost less to buy and operate, P&WC had to challenge its people to deliver unprecedented levels of service to future PW600 operators.

If all goes according to plan, starting sometime in 2006 a Pratt & Whitney Canada employee is going to push a button that will send an electrical signal to a motor that will turn a sprocket attached to a chain that drives an engine build stand along a relatively short assembly line, and just scant hours later, complete PW615Fs and 610Fs will roll off the end of the line into a test cell then into crates for shipping to Cessna and Eclipse for installation into new Mustangs and Eclipse 500s. Thus will the era of the very light jet transition from the design, certification, and testing phase into full-scale production, operation, and naturally, maintenance.

The assembly process for the PW600-series engines is going to take a remarkable handful of hours; the goal is four hours or less per engine, with an eight-hour total elapsed time goal for parts-at-the-ready to engine testing finished. The 60-foot-long PW600 conveyor, which moves at what seems like a tediously slow two inches per minute, will at full rate during one shift send 1,000 engines per year--or four per day--into the aftermarket. That number could easily double by adding a second shift.

Maria Della Posta, P&WC's vice president customer support, and Beno�t Brossoit, vice president Service Centres, have the challenging job of making sure that when those engines start turning, a comprehensive support network is ready to answer pilots' and mechanics' questions, train mechanics, repair any problems, and handle the hot-section inspections and overhauls that will probably occur much earlier than anyone expects given the amount these very light jets are projected to fly.

"Very quickly we will have to grow," said Brossoit, "quicker than anything we've seen before. If the projections we've seen materialize, it's going to be very interesting."

The PW600 model is not exactly new; the engine concept dates from 1999, and at NBAA 2000, P&WC introduced the full-scale PW600F demonstrator, revealing that it had a small turbine available for any manufacturer that would like to build a small jet. Eclipse had settled on a tiny Williams International engine, but later switched to P&WC when the Williams engine proved unsuitable. P&WC was ready to build engines for very light jets and had already signed a contract to power Cessna's new Mustang when Eclipse decided to go with P&WC as well. The Mustang will fly P&WC's 1,350-pound thrust PW615F, while the Eclipse runs the 900-pound PW610F. Both engine models, and any new derivatives, will be built on the same assembly line, which is a much more efficient process.

Getting involved early

When launching an entirely new engine program, a manufacturer like Pratt & Whitney Canada has a great opportunity to reexamine the entire customer support process. To make that process work, it is critical for the support personnel to get involved in the design from day one to make sure that maintenance issues are considered and not left for after the engine enters service. All manufacturers are doing this now, but to varying degrees. With the PW600, said Brossoit, "there are a number of things that are quite different and provide a basis for five-fold improvements."

Before making promises about service quality and planning on how this particular engine will be maintained, P&WC surveyed operators to find what they like and don't like about engine support. "There was an opportunity for improvement of field issues," said Maria Della Posta. The big issues were not so hard to figure out: operators don't want to have to deal with a lot of suppliers, they don't want complexity in obtaining service, and they want to focus on availability of their expensive aircraft. Della Posta noted that interest in maintenance-cost-per-hour programs is climbing, according to the survey results.

Those results were fairly obvious, and although they are important, the surveys revealed some valuable additional information. Operators are getting used to much more sophisticated service infrastructures with other types of manufacturers, for example, and they want similar experiences with their aviation products. "There is a transformation in the area of data," Della Posta noted, with the ability to "acquire and send data without a traditional infrastructure." Consumers are used to sharing data seamlessly with computer software providers, for example. "We as consumers have grown to accept this, it has become reality."

What she is suggesting is that a smart manufacturer could set up an entirely new infrastructure for collecting information about the health of the aircraft and use that to make sure the customer stays in the air and not on the ground, waiting for maintenance to get done. "What does the product tell us?" she asked. And if the product is "talking" to P&WC, then it's a simple step to fix a small problem proactively before it becomes a larger and more expensive issue.

Della Posta calls this examination a "to be" process, or trying to figure out what would be the perfect customer experience. "We want to shed the traditional view of how it has to be," she said. "It forces a kind of thinking of the customer environment."

This thinking is manifest in the design of the engine itself, which enhances maintainability and helps keep costs down. "There was an influence on design from the beginning," said Brossoit.

"Compared to the PW500, the PW600 has 40 percent fewer parts," he said. "We're driving complexity down through design." The engine is made of 13 interchangeable modules. "The modularity is the best that I've seen in the history of P&WC," Brossoit said. And this modularity allows P&WC to do something unique, testing of individual modules so that they can be installed on an engine as needed. "We're focusing a lot of effort," he added, "leveraging the modularity of the engine to meet that five-fold reduction. This allows us to think completely differently; there are all kinds of opportunities to do things that were almost impossible. For example, we could have a pool of modules available. It allows the old process to be able to move a lot quicker."

On the PW600, all accessories are one deep, meaning that they are easily accessible, without requiring removal of other parts. Unusual on a small turbine, technicians can perform a hot-section inspection on-wing in one eight-hour shift.

The number of suppliers has also dropped, from a typical 80 to 90 down to 30. This helps improve aftermarket service by limiting the number of companies that P&WC has to deal with, speeding communications and improving quality and responsiveness, according to Brossoit.

Simulation drives productivity

The PW600 is not only going to be P&WC's fastest new engine to market but also the quickest to assemble. The eight-hour target time for assembly and test is a huge reduction in time, down from a typical 45-plus hours for a PW500.

This reduction is in part due to the moving assembly line mentioned above, but it is more because of the industrial design talents of Pierre-Jules Nunes, manager, supply chain-small turbofan program procurement and logistics.

Nunes spent years at General Motors learning how to produce large numbers of products efficiently. Oddly enough, Nunes is sure that what he learned at a large high-volume manufacturing plant--and what he also learned from competitors like Toyota--can be applied to a company like P&WC, which makes just a few thousand engines per year.

"I've had people say, `it's not automotive, Pierre.' But the PW600 is allowing us to change," he said. The key is that any manufacturing process has a core goal, to turn the customer's purchase order into cash as soon as possible. The longer it takes to produce the item for which the customer is paying, the longer the wait for the cash to arrive.

"We cannot go with craftsmanship anymore," Nunes emphasized, obviously not referring to quality but to the customized kind of work--Nunes calls it "tweaking"--that has sometimes been needed to manufacture aerospace products. "We cannot afford the tweaking anymore," he said. "We can assure quality and ease of manufacturing." And the result will be a more robust engine.

Nunes and Della Posta and Brossoit have adapted a process called 3P to the unique challenges of the PW600 program, both on the manufacturing side and in the service organization. The term "3P" means production preparation process, but what it really signifies is the application of "lean" principles to the manufacturing and service-delivery processes. "This cannot be achieved by doing as before," said Nunes.

The 3P process centers on bringing together all the people involved in a process for a week to craft a detailed plan for how all their functions will mesh. "It's really about bringing people together early in the process," he explained. "We don't have an engine, but we can think of issues up front. You know the architecture already, even if the engine is not designed yet. The full team is able to criticize and construct together. You can imagine...having a conveyor in aerospace."

Nunes held the first 3P with PW600 suppliers in March 2004. It was early in the process and there wasn't enough time to go through the normal supplier selection process. "We had to pick them early," he said, "before the design was done."

During the week-long 3P, all the P&WC and supplier people simulated the PW600 assembly line. The plan was to have a "mini-mart" next to the assembly line with three to four days worth of parts and components ready to install, which would help keep the conveyor moving. "We went through the exercise of the line," said Nunes. The suppliers learned who would be responsible to deliver each component at what point and which operations they could each do to speed the process. For example, one supplier could install a wiring harness on its component. And during the 3P event, that supplier was introduced to the wiring-harness manufacturer so they could coordinate efforts to maximize efficiency. "Here's the supplier," Nunes recalled saying during the 3P event, "go talk to him."

Not all suppliers found this new process as compelling as Nunes and his team did, but he added, "some responded well. Every time we have a 3P event, people improve their processes."

For P&WC, the moving assembly line is a first, and it's probably extremely uncommon in the aerospace engine manufacturing arena. "It's worth it," Nunes said. "By having a line, you ensure one-piece flow. There's no way anyone can overproduce. This is a drive to reduce all forms of waste, and overproduction will create a lot of waste."

One-piece flow is a uniquely Toyota way of manufacturing, and those who assume that Toyota's principles apply only to high-volume production are likely going to be proven wrong by Nunes and his team.

One-piece flow simply means working on one piece at a time until it's finished as opposed to producing huge batches of parts of the final assembly then inundating the final assemblers with more than enough material.

It may be more economical to produce a bunch of parts in batches, but it isn't efficient. Batch-produced stuff has to be moved around too much, so there is not only the time to make the unit but the time to move it from the batch area to the final-assembly area. In one-piece flow, the unit moves down the conveyor, adding parts from the mini-mart as it moves, reducing the total time it takes for the unit to be completed. The parts and components are also built using the one-piece flow concept.

Batch processes tend to produce excess inventory, too. If one batch-maker is more efficient than another, then that batch will grow faster, generating more inventory than might be needed, but there is no way to slow down the more efficient maker. Another drawback is that batch processing doesn't lend itself to making different engines. The process is optimized for just one type of engine, and if a customer wants one slightly different, they have to wait until the engine batch is done, which delays the flow of cash.

When a machine in a batch system breaks down, there is no urgency to fix the machine because only one batch of many is affected.

In the one-piece system, a key tenet is that when there is a problem, someone on the assembly line raises their hand for attention. And they get the necessary attention because if they don't, the line stops. But anyone can stop the line if necessary, and when this happens, a lot of attention is paid to the cause of the conveyor stoppage so that the problem gets fixed quickly and properly so as to keep the line from stopping again.

One-piece flow eliminates all of these problems, enabling the PW600 line to produce any version of the engine, as many as are needed, quickly and efficiently. One-piece flow, Nunes said, allows for "the steady of rhythm of production," something that all manufacturers strive to achieve.

3P works for service, too

Della Posta and Brossoit are applying the principles of 3P to the service side of the PW600 program, too. "Speed-to-market on this engine is like nothing we've seen," said Brossoit. "We need to be there on time. I'm definitely confident we're going to be there, but with a different way of servicing the product. We want a no-surprise environment, and we'll have to deploy people to do that."

What's different about the PW600 is that it is enabling the expansion of the jet market down the aviation food chain, from the professionally operated aircraft to the individual owner/operator who is trading up from a piston-powered airplane. There are plenty of jets currently owned and operated on a small scale by individuals, but the Mustangs and Eclipses will significantly expand the size of that market and will also lead to the growth of large-fleet air-taxi operations.

"We will have a variety of customers," Brossoit noted, "and we need to have a support structure that is customized to them. Each category of customer, we're designing programs to support them. The real key is customization, not one-size-fits-all. That's why we're going through this what-if scenario."

The 3P process as applied to the service side of P&WC's PW600 program helps with the customization needed to address the different types of owners because it helps everyone involved think ahead of time about all the possible issues that might develop. "It's a simple simulation tool that allows you to drive change way up front," said Brossoit.

The first 3P event for the service teams involved six teams meeting for a week. They first defined the as-is process for dealing with customer problems then brainstormed the desired state, the goals for the 3P event. They then simulated the desired state, or as Brossoit put it, "what needs to happen to make it reality." The teams examine every area of interaction with customers and the flow of data, from seemingly small items such as how to reduce the time before returning a customer phone call to the steps needed to accomplish a hot-section inspection. A future 3P will continue developing the game plan for the PW600 overhaul, including simulations of each part and how they flow and fit together.

"It's all about how we connect the dots," said Maria Della Posta, "and make it come together."

"As we do all this work internally," Brossoit said, "we're also in constant contact with the airframe manufacturers. We need to adapt our support structure and vision to theirs, how they want to maintain their aircraft. It's very encouraging to see how Cessna and Eclipse are committed to providing a lot of value to the customer, and we're working hand-in-hand with those two OEMs."

New documentation

The maintenance manuals are also subject to scrutiny in P&WC's examination of the service and support processes for the PW600. "The manuals are being concurrently developed," Della Posta said. "We have been doing this a while, this is not new to the 600, but we're doing it quicker than in the past."

What is new for the 600 is the way the team is looking at the PW600's maintenance manuals, according to Della Posta. "Rather than look at it as a set of separate manuals, I want to write a new method." The plan is to provide the information needed by the technician at the right time in the right place, using technology.

The maintenance information will be entirely accessible on the web and dynamically updated, so that traditional revisions will not be needed. Most important, with such a dynamic system, when some technician learns something about repairing a PW600 problem, that information will flow into the maintenance documentation so that it can be shared. Too often, Della Posta noted, technicians employ undocumented processes that are needed to fix a problem. "We find this, we do this," she said, "but it's not in the manual. It's tribal knowledge." For her, the big question is, "how do I shorten that learning curve?"

"Technology allows you to do this," said Brossoit. And one way that technology is helping is by merging training and maintenance documents, so that everyone is working with the same source information.

"We brought these groups together," said Della Posta. "We're looking at the production data for building the engine and maintenance documents and service center information, merging it into one system that builds on it and learns. So production learning will flow to the maintenance side."

"This is the value of 3P," said Brossoit. "Instead of reinventing the wheel, we're adapting to the aftermarket. There's a lot of benefit out of doing this. We've got an incredible team here. When you can move this intellectual capital from fixing problems to preventing problems, you can influence the design." Instead of waiting for the engine to enter the marketplace, he added, "we're making upfront investments in the processes and tooling. Usually we would wait."

The manifestation of all this work is all the behind-the-scenes work being done to prepare for the PW600's entry-into-service next year. The service and support team is working closely with P&WC's Service Centre network to ensure readiness. "We are developing a training program using a building-block strategy with courses in four levels for pilots, technicians, lead technicians, and repair personnel," said Della Posta. "We are also pursuing e-learning technologies. We're going to provide all kinds of training to people who are going to be on the front line in the market, including familiarization, ramp servicing, base maintenance, specialized maintenance, and hot-section inspection courses. It's a big challenge, and we've got quite a bit to do. Our field representatives are being educated to support people in the field. We will have mobile repair teams in the field able to respond quickly. We'll help our customers, especially early in the process to help them through the learning curve."

"The industry is starting to realize the potential of these small jets is humongous," Brossoit said. "Everybody wants to be part of it."