Rhinestahl Is Ready To Roll: CFM Leap Tooling

As three licensed tooling suppliers await the last piece of the engine maintenance manual for the CFM Leap coming July 1, Rhinestahl, a tool manufacturer, is close to completing the engine MRO puzzle. It has solidified agreements with two Leap owners and hopes to win two more tooling contracts established in the next few weeks.

JD: Are there any exclusive rights or market/territory breakdowns?

BD – There is no breakdown. It’s a wide-open competition across the globe.

BG –Our regional customer managers represent different regions through out the world. They’ll go meet with the customers who are getting ready to have their Leap…As time gets a little closer, and the EIS gets a little closer, our technical team will go out with the sales representative to ensure we have a comprehensive package for their EIS. Just in the last several weeks, I’ve gone to Germany, Brazil, Seattle, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore.

JD: How has your knowledge and expertise with either the CFM56 or other engines helped with the Leap in particular?

DH – The Leap takes its anatomy somewhat from the CFM56, but it also takes a lot of the fine points from the [GEnx].

ZB – GE, historically, has made great engine products There’s really a paradigm shift in engine technology, and that’s really represented by the GEnx, the Boeing 787 and 747. They’re kind of the new CF6, essentially. As far as the CFM, the Leap is the newest and latest offering. It’s important to mention the old CF6 and CFM56 because really the Leap is a complete new engine architecture and design philosophy. It has new performance parameters driven by the airlines’ need for less fuel burn and better emissions. When you talk about CFM and all the older tools that airlines have used, you talked about using them for the new engine like the Leap. While it’s design maybe similar, the engine technology is so new and different that it all really requires all-new tooling as well as almost a new thought process.

You know, they’ve taken two of the ingredients of an old recipe, thrown them into a new recipe and added five new ingredients. Having much of the same technology as the GEnx on a CFM-sized engine, coupled with our expertise in dealing with the most recent EIS, means there is a lot we can leverage from that.

DH – So one thing that’s new on the Leap, from the CFM standpoint, is the surface oil cooler. The tool is just a protector, but it’s completely new for CFM.  If technicians worked on CFM in the past, they wouldn’t be familiar with this. That same tool exists in the GEnx program.

ZB – CFM56 engines historically use a PMAT (portable maintenance access terminal), basically, a robust industrial computer that airline technicians use to program the engine computer. That’s a tool that exists on CFM. There is also a newer version that exist on Leap. While it’s similar in design, it’s still different. We love data as a modern society, and we want to predict performance trends, engine removals  etc. The whole airline profitability and operational excellence hinges on accurate data. The Leap provides that information if you know how to access it via a PMAT, which is a tool that is available to the airlines.

JD: What’s the cost?

BG – Slightly better than the other guys. [Laughter] I think from what we’ve seen, it’s fairly in line with CFM56 when we look at different shops and the magnitude.

Being able to cover everything, I think you’re somewhere in the ballpark of $1.5 -1.7 million, at just list pricing. That’s just a rough idea of where EIS tools could start. That covers one of everything (including one engine stand).

A lot of customers may elect to outsource things like bore blending to a shop like GE. It covers everything, including some of those expensive tools that customers may not require…For example, many customers won’t have the ability to lift an engine using the dual-point lift because they only have one overhead crane. That would drive them to go with a single-point fixture rather than a dual point.

BD – It’s more functional than cost. Generally, [CFM] will not design the tools to be cheaper. It does happen every once in awhile, but most of the time it’s for a unique customer situation.

I know everyone is always looking at the bottom line. There are different ways of assessing cost. It’s the price of the tooling, the number of tools recommended and cost avoidance by eliminating tools a customer doesn’t need. Other metrics that customers look for are on-time delivery and quality. Our global supply chain adheres to a very strict quality requirement. It gives us the flexibility to make sure that we have excellent on-time delivery. We also have an internal manufacturing capability that allows us to support urgent field issues that come up.

DH – There is one tool in the Leap EIS tooling list that was customer-driven [a U.S. carrier with many CFM Leap orders]. This  customer requested the ability to actuate the VSV (variable stator vanes). There was a provision to access the VSVs pneumatically rather than hydraulically. CFM put that into consideration, and when they designed the hydraulic adapter, they also designed a pneumatic adapter.

There’s a hydraulic cart that’s normally used. Usually, in a maintenance truck, or in a hangar, you’ll have low-pressure pneumatic bottles sitting around. They’ll be on carts or sitting in a technician’s truck. Instead of having to go back to a tool crib and check out the specific hydraulic cart, the mechanics would just hook up to the pneumatic source that’s readily available. It would save a lot on transit time. Like I said, Zach and I worked in line maintenance. Sometimes, it would take 15-20 min. to drive to the shop and 15-20 min. to drive back out to the aircraft. It depends on air traffic and congestion. This particular customer has all vehicles equipped with nitrogen bottles, so we can request that from them.

JD: Is it surprising CFM was responsive and flexible?

BD – We’re at a 95-98% requirement.

BG – With other customer departments, historically, we’ve been held to as high as 98%, and we’ve met those. It’s up there, at least 95% for the Leap requirements for the licensees for on-time delivery. Just as an example, take individual tools. In 2015, 37,100 tools were shipped, the year before 56,252. Our escape percentage on that was 0.05% last year and 0.04% the year prior. There were 22 escapes in 2014 and 18 escapes last year. Even in 2013, we were still at 0.04% with 23 escapes for 65,000 tools. There are different inspection processes.

[*It was later detailed that the decrease in tools shipped over year was due to a product mix change. Sales increased over year. Rhinestahl expects parts numbers to increase in 2016.]

DH – A large majority of the escapes Blake talked about include paperwork not being correct, like a signature is missing.

BD – There is also a CFM specification, P1TF55, and we flow that down to our supply chain…most critically, welding certifications. Welding certifications are for each type of material. For example, we talked about some of the complex aluminum fabrications;  just because you’re qualified and certified to weld carbon steel is not enough, you have to be separately certified to weld aluminum. We flow that down to our supply chain and also our internal manufacturing site.

JD: Can you describe the audit/check in process?

BG – How often are they going to do it? I don’t know. They do have the capability to audit us at least a couple of times a year. Actually, I believe it’s whenever they so desire. On the last audit, we had no issues or signs for concerns.

We knew they would preform audits, and it was part of the requirements that we were well aware of from the start. We have all of those incorporated into our business process, so it’s not a big concern for us if they want to audit weekly.

BD – We complied to the agreement. In aviation, audits are a way of life for compliance. For example, we audit on site every one of our suppliers, including our own internal shop. It’s just a matter of full transparency.

JD – Has everything run smoothly with your suppliers?

BD – There’s always something that comes up in every customer relationship. It’s a matter of working together to solve it, and we have our onsite yearly audits. We also have a yearly supplier symposium [close to 95 people attend], where we bring our global suppliers together for three days. We have frequent visits by our contract administrator, who are now known as supplier account managers. We’re constantly talking to our supply chain. It’s back and forth, a partnership.

BG – One other thing we do as well to secure on-time delivery is capacity planning. Daily, our supply chain director reviews our capacity on each of our suppliers, so we know where we have room.