MRO Americas: Being a Good MRO Partner, Partner

Andre McMillian: Hi. I'm Andre McMillian. I am here at the MRO Americas located in Dallas Fort Worth, Texas. This is the largest MRO conference of the year and I'm representing Military Engines.

Andre McMillian: I'm speaking on a panel that's focused on improving performance through sustainment. One of the things we are going to talk about is how we took the F100 engine and over time we were able to evolve that engine for the F100-100 to -229. In that timeframe we were able to increase the cycles, be able to fly that, and focus on reliability, maintainability and sustainability.

Andre McMillian: We were able to incorporate those changes into the F119 which powers the F-22. From that success we were able to evolve that technology even further with the F135 engine which is a great platform and we are just in the beginning phases of production. We are going to have well over 650 aircraft, in 10 different countries, over the next five years. We are really excited to be able to talk about that platform and how we are going to be able to provide a sustainment solution for that.

Andre McMillian: If you look at the history of our engine community, we were able to go from 450 cycles to now where the F135 is easily achieving 5,200 cycles and it is just the very beginning and we are just getting started. We are really excited about that. As we move forward, we will be able to improve the technology on the F135 to give it more thrust and more fuel burn to allow them to be able to operate in any environment, anywhere in the world. We're excited about that opportunity.

Andre McMillian: I think it's good we were able to support this year and I look forward to supporting MRO conferences in future years.

McMillian spoke about improving product performance through sustainment innovation. Focusing on the historical development of military engine maintainability and reliability, his session illustrated how Pratt & Whitney continues to incorporate advanced technologies that support increased military engine safety for customers. He explained that this allows them to realize benefits such as reduced service disruption, reduced maintenance burden, high operational readiness and improved life-cycle costs.

In addition to partnering with military customers, Pratt & Whitney is also working to be the best partner for our new Geared Turbofan™ engine customers. Hear Andrew Tanner, vice president, Customer Service, Pratt & Whitney Aftermarket, speak about how we are preparing each airline for entry into service.

Andrew Tanner: Hello, my name is Andrew Tanner and I am speaking to you from the Pratt & Whitney booth at the MRO conference in Dallas, Texas. And I am here to tell you about all the great work that we've been doing to make sure that our customers are ready for Geared Turbofan entry into service.

Andrew Tanner: It starts with a great product. A product that brings real and true value like 16 percent better fuel burn, 75 percent better noise, 50 percent better emissions brings true value for our customers. So our focus had to be on building processes that were structured, simple, sustainable and scalable.

Andrew Tanner: In order to do this we started out with building a gated process. A gated process that starts 15 to 18 months before entry into service, with gates about every three months. In each one of those gates, there are deliverables for us and deliverables for our customer to make sure that they're ready. It starts out pretty high level with introductions, making sure our customers have accounts built into our system, but then it goes through initial provisioning, materials, line maintenance, tooling, training and so on to make sure everything is in place by the time they take the product, that we're ready.

Andrew Tanner: We've been bringing more field reps on, at our customers, and making sure they're trained and ready to support the customers day in day out. We've also brought our most season reps, I call them EIS reps, and brought them into the flight test program. And they participate in the flight test program at both Bombardier and at Airbus to make sure they also understand the product and how the product works on the aircraft. Those EIS field reps are now being deployed to the entry into service customers and will stay with the EIS customers for three to six to eight to maybe even 12 months to ensure we have a smooth transition and a smooth entry into service.

Stay tuned for more updates from MRO Americas!