A rejuvenated Pratt & Whitney expects to see a 30- to 40-percent improvement in the time it takes to assemble a PW1100G geared turbofan for the Airbus A320neo compared with its “legacy” engines, thanks to a new so-called horizontal build process.  Instituted in March at its plant in Middletown, Connecticut, it uses a system designed and installed by Germany’s Durr Group, and Pratt thinks it could see a 50-percent efficiency gain as the process matures. The system has been in place at the Pratt & Whitney Canada facility in Mirabel, Canada, for some five years and at the “big” Pratt’s plant in West Palm Beach, Florida, since last summer. Pratt’s moving production line process is the centerpiece of the company’s plan to accelerate rates from zero to 500 PW1100Gs per year–and at least 800 GTFs overall–within two and half to three years.

Now building 500 V2500 turbofans for the A320ceo (current engine option) as the lead manufacturer in the IAE consortium, Pratt & Whitney expects A320neo production to accelerate at roughly the same pace as the ceo declines, meaning the Middletown facility will need to execute virtually a full transition to PW1100Gs by some time in 2018. The job won’t come without its challenges, but, according to Pratt & Whitney senior vice president for engineering and operations Danny Di Perna, a concentrated commitment to supply chain management will give the company its best chance for a smooth transition.

“We’ve secured $18 billion in long-term contracts over the last couple of years for the next 10 to 12 years,” Di Perna told AIN during the company’s recent “Media Day” event in the Hartford area. “So we’ve primed the pump. We have told all the suppliers you must invest, you must hire your people early, you must build buffer inventory at your expense, [and] put it on the shelf. You know I would love for a supplier to just give me what they have on the shelf every day...then they can replenish. If it all works, that’s the concept.”

Out of some 340 suppliers on the GTF program, only about 30 are new, said Di Perna. Most, therefore, know Pratt well, and vice-versa. Many might also recognize a shift in approach and attitude from the OEM, which, explained Di Perna, had gained a reputation for negotiating three-year agreements and a penchant for severing ties if the supplier in question fell short of expectations.  

“My brand is, we put the ‘L’ back in LTA [long-term agreement],” said Di Perna. “And the reason is, for years, we were a bit criticized that we’ll threaten to take our parts elsewhere as soon as we can.

“So we have a different approach,” he added. “We said [to suppliers] ‘listen; there’s our target cost...if you can get me there in two years and you sign up to that target cost, I’ll go along with you.’ And I can tell you this has worked for us. Suppliers more and more are getting closer and closer to our targets because we need, financially, to get to our targets, even though it’s challenging and difficult. And in those cases we go long.”

Pratt also practices what Di Perna termed “no-single-point-of-failure, dual sourcing.” Instituted in 2011, the program endeavors to ensure suppliers maintain at least two sources of parts supply. For example, a supplier might make the same parts in two different factories with two sets of duplicate tooling, explained Di Perna. The approach mitigates risk associated with natural disasters or tool breakage on one of the production lines. In return, Pratt might offer to enter into an exclusive supply deal for the life of the program.

“Now, it doesn’t [apply] everywhere,” said Di Perna. “But at least what we’re doing is identifying and paying attention to where it’s not possible. Some of our things are specialized coatings we do internally...and if, unfortunately, something were to go wrong we’d have an issue. But we’ve been in the business for 90 years, we know what we’re doing, we know how to protect ourselves, and there’s nothing we couldn’t re-create, there’s nothing we can’t do. It’s just [a matter of] a little bit of time and a little bit of money.”

Of course, dual sourcing can present challenges of its own for suppliers, which rely on economies of scale to maximize margin and offer competitive pricing. As Di Perna explained, when a company maintains two sources, it must split the volume, meaning the economies of scale get split. If Pratt requires dual sourcing from all its suppliers, it might find itself paying more for the product.

“So then what you do is by exception. We say ok, we’re going to have a single point of failure here...what’s the risk mitigation? What if? OK, I feel confident, I sign, we go...that’s the way we’ve been playing it.”

Di Perna works closely on improving production processes with Pratt & Whitney commercial engines president Greg Gernhardt, who spoke with AIN about how the company’s approach to deploying engineering resources has helped ensure maximum parts “produceability.”

Historically, Pratt engineers involved in design and certification of an engine would move on to the next engine project once their work with a certified engine begins to wind down. Gernhardt said that Di Perna’s decision to instead move a large portion of the certification engineers to operations and manufacturing has worked “brilliantly.”

“If the producer is having issues with a part [one must ask] ‘What features are they having problems with?’” explained Gernhardt. “So now you have an engineer who’s just designed the part, who’s done all the structural analysis, understands all the critical features, is now on the site of manufacturing to make sure that the part can get made. Velocity of decisions is our friend, right? We’ve got to make quick decisions.

“So I’m really excited about the fact that Danny moved those engineers over because there’s pure continuity,” he added. “What I like about it is the engineers are excited to do it, because they feel ownership for that part, so they just go along with that part, so it’s nice to see.”