“This is one of the best decisions for your company for the next 20 years.”
That striking message is one that has been recently delivered by Jean-Paul Ebanga, president and chief executive of narrowbody engines joint venture CFM International. Ebanga was addressing executives representing the manufacturer’s supply chain, with the “this” referring to their participation in CFM’s Leap programme.
Coming hot on the heels of the Leap-1A’s first – and apparently flawless – flight aboard the Airbus A320neo on 19 May, Ebanga says he emphasised to the assembled delegates how vital their efforts had been to achieve that milestone “at the exact date we had in our calendar four years ago when we launched the programme”.
Of course, the “supplier symposia” – three have been held covering Asia, Europe and the US – have a more important function than simply backslapping and self-congratulation.
Facing an unprecedented ramp-up as the Leap-series engines enter service – first on the Neo from 2016, then in 2017 with the -1B model on the Boeing 737 Max, and lastly the -1C on the Comac C919 – allied to record production of the current-generation CFM56 model, the manufacturer is attempting to ensure the readiness and robustness of its supply chain.
The objective of the meetings was two-fold, explains Ebanga. First, to keep the supply chain abreast with what it going on “at programme level” and “what’s the vision and actual position” of the leadership both from CFM and its parent companies GE and Snecma.
“Having the leadership of all those companies from our supplier base aligned with us is very important,” he says.
Both parent companies have invested hundreds of millions of dollars on new factories and expansion of existing facilities to bring the Leap into production, he notes.
“To be really effective at programme level we need our supplier base to do the same. Not at the same financial level, but we need that supplier base to be as committed as we are to ensure the success of the Leap.
“We need them all to be fully aligned with us and understand what’s going on at programme level.”
The second objective, says Ebanga, is to demonstrate that in the realm of supplier management, GE and Snecma are acting as one team. “The practice 20 years or even 10 years ago was that each parent company was in charge of its own supplier base,” he says.
However, bearing in mind the requirement to manage the transition between CFM56 and Leap – and the “steep” ramp-up on the Leap – it no longer has “the luxury” of engaging with the supply chain in that way.
CFM must work with them “as a single team” to “make sure we have what we need in terms of quality”.
“They have to be complying with Leap requirements rather than GE or Snecma requirements,” says Ebanga.
And what requirements. Within 30 months of the start of serial engine production, CFM will be making Leap powerplants at a rate it took 30 years to achieve with the CFM56. By 2018 or 2019, when the majority of its production will be Leap variants, the manufacturer forecasts an annual output of 1,800-1,900 engines.
To cope with that – going from “zero to x thousand of parts in just a few years” – CFM has also been stress testing the entire supply chain, including the component production facilities of GE and Snecma. This aims to check the readiness of suppliers – not only towards service entry, but the initial ramp-up too.
So, for a limited sprint – seven days in all – the supply chain has been “producing the parts at a rate that we will need in 2016”, says Ebanga.
“By really pushing the throttle of parts production you are able identify where there are any limitations and this gives us a year or so to fix that.”
This intensity throws up unexpected findings, such as machines that previously required maintenance downtime every few months now needing it on a much more rapid cycle, and the consequent impact that has on production rates.
The exercise will be repeated each year for four years, covering the production rate for the following 12 months. So in 2016 it will trial 2017’s manufacturing rate, and so on.
Additionally, in the run up to entry into service, CFM is also bringing all its key executives together every week “so they are able to take action… and they are able to commit tens of millions of dollars to address issues right on the spot”.
“We are sharing these kind of actions with the supplier base to help them figure out what to do to have the right agility,” adds Ebanga.
But while CFM continues to prepare for the future and to begin delivering the more than 9,000 Leap engines it has so far sold, in the meantime it still has to achieve certification for all three variants.
Gareth Richards, Leap programme manager for the GE side of CFM, describes 2015 as “the biggest, most intensive year in the Leap development programme timing". Testing, he says, is “absolutely at its peak” this year, with a total of 33 engines currently being evaluated or in assembly, in part driven by the requirements to achieve first flight on the A320neo and then on the 737 Max next year.
To give an idea of the scale of activity currently under way, Richards points out then when he was programme leader on the GE90-15B, just six or seven examples of the engine were used in the certification campaign.
"The total test programme [for the Leap] is bigger than anything that GE, Snecma or CFM has done before," says Richards.
It has so far accumulated around 44,000h and 5,500 cycles, but this rate will accelerate as more engines come on stream. The target at service entry on the Leap-1A is a total of 40,000 cycles.
Those engines are required not just for certification but endurance testing too, he says. "We are wringing out the design to ensure it's service ready."
Richards was speaking shortly after the Leap-1A performed its 4h 25min maiden sortie aboard the A320neo on 19 May. An event about which he says the company “could not be more delighted”.
“It went flawlessly from an engine perspective. I put a personal call in to the flight-test team leader in Toulouse and asked him for the real story – he told me it was flawless. That’s remarkable,” says Richards.
“It was one of the most successful first flights of any aircraft that I have been associated with.”
That first flight was followed by further sorties over the subsequent week. Since then, says Ebanga, the aircraft (F-WNEW) has been flying virtually every day.
“It’s a fantastic start to a flight-test campaign and there’s more to come,” says Richards. “To use a British expression, I’m absolutely over the moon.”
All three variants have been flown on GE’s 747 flying testbed from its Victorville, California facility, but the start of flight testing on the type it is intended to power is a significant milestone.
However, bubbling away in the background are media reports – never entirely refuted by Airbus – that the Leap is failing to meet its targets on specific fuel consumption.
Richards declines to be drawn on the detail, but adds: “We have not been aggressively responding [to those claims] because nothing could be further from the truth. We are on plan for entry into service. We are happy with where the engines are. We didn’t want to blow them up something significant by responding to the rumours.”
CFM and its parents have given “significant financial guarantees” on the performance of the engines, he says. “We are putting our money where our mouth is. We are firmly guaranteeing that and expect to achieve it at entry into service.
“We have made strong financial guarantees to our customers and the engines that we deliver are going to meet those. This is very well backed up by the full faith and credit of our corporation.”
Several new advanced technology materials are being introduced by CFM on the Leap. In the hot section, ceramic matrix composites are being utilised, for example in the combustor liners, which are both lighter and more heat resistant than the materials they replace. Snecma is making the fan case and blades using 3D woven resin transfer moulding – these components recently passed the crucial blade-out test for the -1A variant which, says Richards, “was such a success that the people watching it from the side could not see the engine move".
The engine also marks the first application for CFM of parts produced via additive layer manufacturing (ALM). This process, also known as 3D printing, will be employed to build fuel nozzle tips at dedicated facility in Auburn, Alabama. It is a small beginning for the use of ALM, but Richards says that CFM has a “road map” for “dramatically” increasing its use. "Just now we are only scratching the surface of what the capabilities are,” he says.
It has already been reviewing a design that takes nine different parts that make up a bearing structure and forms them into one. This is at an early design phase, but with engineers already able to produce the component via ALM, it is now a case of working through how to cope with high volume manufacture before it is integrated into a later iteration of the Leap. "We will let them work over the next months or year and get a part that's ready for high-rate production,” says Richards.
"We have a litany of those that are in our list. We have big plans for additive [manufacturing] which are already under way."
Source: Flight Daily News
