A new president, restructured sales and field service teams, operations expansion in Asia and Brazil and a new logo and mobile app unveiled here at NBAA 2013 indicate just some of the dynamic changes undertaken in the past few months by turbine engine overhauler Dallas Airmotive (Booth No. N3505), a BBA Aviation company. According to Doug Meador, who was promoted to president in January, these changes and others are designed to bring Dallas Airmotive’s services closer to the customers.

“The message is really around serving the customer and making our company easier to do business with,” said Meador. “We’ve received past feedback that sometimes our systems or organization were not easy to deal with. So everything we’ve done around aligning ourselves organizationally, our sales reorganization, the mobile app and website changes, even the logo defining who we are, ultimately makes it easier for the customer to do business with us.”

One of the first changes Meador instituted upon becoming company president was to reorganize the sales force into territorial directors supported by a team of regional engine managers.

“Our sales team now sells all [of our] products; they’re not [individually] product focused like they were,” said Meador. “And then we aligned our service regions with those same sales territories. So now if a customer is in Van Nuys and they have a problem and they call their salesperson, that salesperson has a relationship with [the corresponding] regional field service representatives and managers. This speeds up our response time.”

The alignment of sales and service regions also required decentralization in the company’s growing F1rst Support mobile engine service program. Launched in October 2010, F1rst Support originally contained a Texas-based global command center supporting more than 115 field service representatives (FSRs) around the world. In response to customer demands for more responsive on-site service, the F1rst Support program now also includes the company’s 14 brick-and-mortar regional turbine centers (RTCs), four custom 28-foot mobile service vehicles strategically placed in the U.S., several mobile response teams (MRTs) scattered around the world and satellite command centers in Singapore and the UK.

“When we looked at all of the resources we had in place to support our customers, the organization we had created did not allow the customer to feel the full extent of the resources we have to support them,” said Meador. “That was mainly because of our organization being centralized and not close to the customer. So we’re capitalizing on our regional turbine centers as the footprint to expand our service capabilities out of those RTCs.”

Expands Engine Support

Dallas Airmotive also recently added new capabilities to its F1rst Support program, including field and/or mobile repair support for Honeywell HTF7000 and Rolls-Royce BR710 engines and Honeywell RE100 and RE220 APUs. Meador cited changing engine service requirements as a second reason to expand the F1rst Support program, noting that newer engines require fewer extensive shop visits and more field maintenance events.

“More of the product that we’re servicing have field activity rather than shop activity,” said Meador. “The HTF7000 is a prime example; it’s an on-condition engine. Most of the activity on engines of that type, such as hot sections and mid-life repairs, had been done in a shop. That activity can now be done in the field because of how the engine is designed. What was a $300,000 shop repair is now a $50,000 field event.”

Bringing the support closer to customers doesn’t stop in the U.S., however. Dallas Airmotive has also been expanding its capabilities in Asia Pacific, Brazil and Latin America by installing new field service MRTs; moving into a larger facility in Belo Horizonte, Brazil; and adding new engine authorizations to its Singapore RTC. Established in February 2012, the Singapore RTC recently completed its first major periodic inspection (MPI) on a Honeywell TFE731 engine.

“This first MPI is the culmination of a year’s effort to establish our Singapore facility in the region,” said Meador. “Asia Pacific is a relatively new and high-growth region for business aviation. We have committed the resources to service a growing base of customers now and for the long term.”

Engine App

In yet another effort to enhance connectivity between the company and its customers, Dallas Airmotive has launched a new mobile “MyTurbine” app that connects directly to the F1rst Support database, allowing customers to contact F1rst Support with one click and instantly providing information about the customer’s registered aircraft to Dallas Airmotive personnel. The app also provides a window into the Dallas Airmotive shop process, allowing the customer to track the aircraft or engine through various shop checkpoints.

“We still want to develop our relationships and expand our reach,” said Meador, “but we really want to accelerate the service side of our business through enhancing our customer service. [We’re] getting a whole lot faster in our response time and problem resolution, whether it’s just a telephone call or an AOG situation in Bangkok. We’re going through a process of redefining what the service experience with Dallas Airmotive is.”