Press Release

Issued by .

October 5, 2008

Leveraging more than 20 years of lean transformation and redesign experience, StandardAero's Enterprise Services group has led the redesign of their Los Angeles facility engine shop. The $3 million investment is designed to update and improve the existing TFE731, TPE331 and CFE738 engine shops, enhancing overall operations and performance. Customers will receive estimates quicker and significantly lower turn times.

By focusing on process, ownership and job roles in the new shop, customers can expect a 20 percent decrease in average turn around time for all three product lines and shorter estimating and invoicing processes. They will also benefit from StandardAero's repair versus replace philosophy of repairing parts instead of replacing them whenever possible, passing the cost savings onto the customer.

"This investment in point-of-use tooling and customized factory flow is vastly improving efficiency, reducing turn-times, and creating a safer environment through cell design and visual factory methodology," said StandardAero President and CEO, Rob Mionis. "While we are just getting the new shop up and running, we expect to see vast improvements in throughput efficiency and turn-times."

The redesigned engine shop is organized into four cells: a TPE331 cell, a TFE731 Speed Line cell, a TFE731 & CFE738 Heavy Maintenance cell and a Supply cell. These cells are organized teams of people, processes and tooling designed to support specific work scope processes. The TFE731 Speed Line cell focuses exclusively on Major Periodic Inspections (MPIs) and minor repair work scopes of less than 30 hours. The TFE731/CFE738 Heavy Maintenance cell focuses on MPIs on the CFE738, Core Zone Inspections (CZIs) on the TFE731 and all repairs on both engines.

StandardAero's cell design philosophy allows the company to design systems and processes that significantly improve efficiencies and productivity by eliminating or significantly reducing non-value added activities such as hunting for and gathering items to process units. Kitting of parts and components combined with tooling located at the point of use, allows technicians to focus on value added activities with reduced effort and stress. Streamlining information flow, customer service, engineering, supply chain and inspectors are all embedded as a part of each cell team.

The current redesign provides the foundation for future business needs alignment and increased capacity enabling a doubling of throughput should the need arise. Improvements will continue through Kaizen events and other continuous improvement activities. Any future redesigns at this site will be market driven.