The aftercare supply chain is playing a strategic role in fulfilling airframers' efforts to determine the precise lifecycle environmental impact of an aircraft
The rules of engagement are defined as a set of directives issued by a competant military authority setting down the circumstances under which combat will be initiated.
In similar fashion, both Airbus and Boeing are applying their industrial muscle to dictate the environmental parameters within which aftercare service providers should operate during an aircraft's entire in-service existence. This is part of a common lifecycle approach that places environmental considerations at the fore and whose tenets now frequently feature as critical requirements in the selection of an approved base of maintenance suppliers.
But while a military force tends to keep its rules of engagement to itself, airframers are becoming much more vocal about setting their sights beyond their traditional sphere of design and manufacturing activity in their efforts to reduce the environmental footprint over the aircraft's whole life.
The aerospace principals are staking what they see as a rightful claim in the supervision of a supplier's management of water, energy, hazardous and solid waste and chemicals among many other resources.
Boeing's director of environmental strategy Per Noren is a Swedish national who moved to Seattle last autumn from Carmen Systems, a developer of resource optimisation solutions, specialising in crew and fleet management for airline clients such as British Airways, Lufthansa, SAS and Aeroméxico.
Efficiency focus
He started his career there, focusing on increasing airline efficiency at a time when the largest single airline business cost at 30% was crew. "That 30% has now been replaced by fuel as the largest cost," he notes.
His mission at the US airframer will be to apply the same principles applied at Carmen to improve the whole value chain of a Boeing aircraft from design to end-of-life. "There is only one way to do that. You need to be very disciplined with structured processes put in place. It is also about working across industrial borders to achieve that goal."
He points to Boeing as a company which has arguably led the way in lean manufacturing initiatives to reduce waste within its own immediate sphere of influence. Indeed, in the six years to 2005, Boeing achieved a 23% reduction in hazardous waste, a 24% reduction in acreage, a 41% reduction in factory size and a 52% reduction in energy consumption.
"Boeing has a mission and has set itself some challenging and specific metrics and milestones. Lean manufacturing is one of them and we want to see MRO providers achieve the same kind of reduction," says Noren.
Environmental pledge
Goldcare, Boeing's comprehensive service offering for 787 customers that brings together maintenance, engineering and materials management on a flight hour basis, acts, he believes, as a surrogate pledge of environmental credibility for airlines conscious of their corporate social responsibilities.
Many carriers, ever mindful that the global maintenance, repair and overhaul market is becoming increasingly tough are, of course, working hard to find ways of reducing their costs to remain competitive.
David Stewart of maintenance consultancy Aerostrategy says that just over 50% of overall maintenance at major airlines is outsourced, a figure he expects to rise to over 60% by 2016, driven by the introduction of new engines with high barriers to entry, in addition to increasingly sophisticated components.
Despite indications that the gilt-edged maintenance solution for everything outside 787 line maintenance may come with a similarly gilt-edge price tag - the economics of which appear to have left the market unimpressed - Noren reckons Goldcare represents a way in which Boeing can set an operational "gold standard" by policing the supply chain of maintenance businesses charged with keeping the aircraft flying.
A mechanism that guarantees availability levels, parts maintenance management and reliability could, however, find a unique place in a maintenance market of premium aircraft and engine types - accompanied as it is by an environmental pledge in a world increasingly increasingly aware of aviation's demerits.
"We, in effect, place the environmental performance demands directly on our suppliers and that ultimately helps our customers to profit," says Noren.
Aircraft painting is one area where maintenance organisations need to keep pace with pioneering painting processes being developed by the airframe manufacturers. Airbus, for example, has just introduced a new two-coat painting process that uses less paint - cutting the amount of solvent released into the atmosphere - requires less time to apply and ultimately reduces aircraft cleaning.
The first customer aircraft painted was the 5,000th Airbus aircraft ever produced, an A330-200, delivered in mid December to Qantas which has on order a further six aircraft to be similarly painted.
Offered as an option, the new painting technique - similar to that used in the car industry - requires the application of just one colour coat with a higher than usual pigment content together with an additional clear coat or varnish applied onto a chromate-free primer.
Whereas standard painting techniques can take up to six coats per aircraft and usually can take up to 12h to dry between coats, the two-coat approach reduces drying time down to two hours.
Qantas is conducting an in-service evaluation with Airbus to fully quantify the benefits of the painting process, the results of which will no doubt be cascaded to the maintenance community, already highly conscious of their environmental commitment in terms of painting operations.
German MRO Lufthansa Technik has developed its own innovative paint processes which reduce both the amount of waste and environmental impact. It eliminates spraying losses by using spray guns that operate on an electrostatic principle. Paint particles are given a positive charge and drawn to the aircraft's metal fuselage which functions as a negative counter pole, cutting spraying loss from an initial 30-35% to a current level of 10%.
Lufthansa Technik's 100 million painting hangar in Hamburg can handle up to 120 aircraft a year, such as a Boeing 747 alongside another widebody simultaneously in two separate painting boxes. Equipped with wet separators, a specially designed air cleansing system, in which a dense curtain of water washes away 98% of the paint mist and other residue, replacing hangar air more than three times each hour.
Similarly, in Ireland where each year Goldcare team partner SR Technics uses around 10t of organic solvents mostly in painting, paint stripping and cleaning aircraft parts, SR has held an Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control Licence since 1999. Subject to unannounced audits and site visits byenvironmental regulators, the licence determines SR's monitoring of air, water, sewer and noise emissions. SR Technics is furthermore in the late stages of securing the much sought-after environmental management standard ISO 14001.
Still, Boeing's Noren concedes that there remains a need for the development of more sophisticated yardsticks, answers about best practice for which even Boeing sometimes lacks any ready response. "There is very little statistical data about where we are so our first priority must be to capture that as an industry and build best practice from that."
"My role at Boeing is to keep it real, define measurability. We need to have an idea about progressiveness on all aspects from design to end-of-life and that includes giving the industry help with facts and figures," he says.
Airbus, too, places a special emphasis on the quality and validation of information fed back from a supplier base required to provide reliable environmental data on products, especially in the tracking and management of hazardous materials. Since 2002, Airbus procurement has aimed to include green criteria in the selection and qualification of suppliers and to promote the introduction of environmental requirements in its contractual agreements using the Airbus Procedure - Environmental Requirements for Suppliers protocol.
Environmental management
Jean-Baptiste Gambini, head of material and processes, says that in the not too distant future Airbus will expect suppliers to implement their own environmental management system equivalent to the airframer's ISO 14001 status that recognizes the manufacturer's robust methods of lifecycle monitoring and minimise the environmental impact of all production processes and products - including through the maintenance regime.
Airbus went on to build on that certification milestone of April 2006 when all 16 of its production sites received the green seal of approval to set the rules for an EADS-wide approach for both sites and products. The Site and Product Oriented Environmental Management System is a more systematic way of assessing lifetime environmental impact of its products.
While a higher level of environmental control should be made easier by Airbus's restructuring to reduce the number of its Tier One manufacturing supplier base, Gambini says that a recent survey of MRO organisations both captive and independent revealed a sharp increase in environmental enquiries from the maintenance community. They range anywhere from the current status of the airframer's research into chromate-free primers to advice on developing their own site and product approach to environmental certification.
Under pressure
"An environmental management system is increasingly seen as a plus and because we are seeing the pressure is such in some countries, we feel we must be preparing to support maintenance organisations more.
"In the last six months, that pressure has become much more discernible. Environmental concerns within maintenance used to be only a minor consideration by MROs and operators. But we are increasingly being asked to supply information in this area because they themselves are being examined by their local regulatory authorities, which are asking whether they have a sufficiently robust management system," says Gambini.
Pierre Girault is vice president of environment and sustainable development for Air France Industries. He says environmental and sustainable development issues have become a strategic subject at AFI, led no doubt by its ultra-green minded Dutch sister division KLM Engineering & Maintenance.
"We think environmental issues will be more and more of a major reference for the industry and that's why we have developed a very precise environmental programme. That's why we also ask our suppliers to sign our procurement charter which outlines ethics, labour standards and respect for the environmental principle which is subject to audit both by our quality assurance and procurement divisions."
This means forging better links with their own suppliers as well as with manufacturers. "To make sure we integrate more closely we have seen a reinforced rhythm of contact between our airline parents and both Boeing and Airbus with the maintenance organisations taking the lead with engine manufacturers," says Girault.
"In our opinion, environment and sustainable development issues should not be considered as a constraint, more as an opportunity. It's ultimately a challenge but fits well within our total quality management system, contributing to a strong holistic approach which can only benefit the company and its people."
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Source: Flight International
