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Lufthansa Technik became the first Boeing 787 cabin modification partner in July.
Last year’s management reshuffle at aerospace giant Boeing brought a new leader to the helm of its aftermarket business.
Chris Raymond, a 34-year company veteran who oversaw environmental initiatives as chief sustainability officer, became president and CEO of Boeing Global Services (BGS) on Jan. 1. Succeeding Stephanie Pope, who moved to head up Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA), Raymond took the reins amid turbulence within the broader company as it battles issues with the supply chain, safety and quality control.
Raymond’s immediate responsibility is to bring “stable execution” to Boeing’s aftermarket services business, reflecting the airframer’s wider goals, he told Inside MRO at the Farnborough International Airshow in July. “We’ve just got to get things more stable, and some of that’s on us,” he said. “Some of that is getting the supply chain healthier. And that’s first and foremost what we’ve got to do.
“The second thing is looking at how the businesses help one another, because we have five businesses in our services area,” he continued. “[BGS] is not a holding company. There are some linkages between those businesses.”
In the near term, Raymond is aiming for “profitable, sustained growth” at BGS, in contrast to some of the lofty aspirations outlined in the division’s first few years. “There were unintended consequences where [previous targets] drove some bad behavior,” he said. “If it’s growth at all costs, that’s usually not disciplined, and that can lead you to some bad places.”
Despite a more moderate approach to growth projections in recent years, BGS has not ruled out acquisitions or expanding capacity. At a press briefing in London on the eve of Farnborough, Raymond said the division would always look for “tuck-in” capability and consider “things that we should do inorganically.”
Much of BGS’ immediate focus is on operations, specifically quality control. Boeing has been carrying out quality stand-downs, starting within BCA and extending into BGS this year.
“Those subjects of strengthening safety, strengthening quality, looking for ways to improve are not going to be just isolated to the production floors—they’re going to find their way to the MRO floors,” Raymond said. “We wanted to get ahead of that, and so we started conducting our own stand-downs.”
Raymond said BGS has solicited feedback from every part of the business, either in person or virtually, and is processing its findings. Headquartered in Plano, Texas, BGS employs about 22,300 people across 300 locations in 70 countries. Every operation in the division was included in the stand-downs, Raymond added.
While BGS is still analyzing the results of these stand-downs, the division has drawn initial lessons on workforce training. “We probably didn’t fully appreciate the loss of experience that occurred in the industry [in the past few years]—not just at Boeing, but certainly we were in that pile, too,” Raymond said. “So the emphasis right now on when you onboard new people, and when you do on-the-job training of new people, is much more intense, so we’ve got to keep focused on that. That’s not unique to the mechanics on the floor—it’s really any function.”
Raymond expects some simplification of work instructions as industry adopts more technology. “Some of that will be to migrate to digital more over time,” he said. “Inside your average MRO, you’ll see a lot of paperwork instruction, quality assurance stamps on paper. We can make work orders more visual and simpler. I think there will be a trend toward digitizing and embedding them with instructional videos and simplifying work orders in MRO shops.”
Raymond remarked that BGS needs to adopt more digital and lean practices to thrive in a strong future aftermarket that is expected to be driven by projected commercial fleet growth over the next decade. “This can be done by better matching the flow and lead-time expectations to customers,” he said. “We also need to focus on creating new offerings, because digital can enter our parts business or it can enter our maintenance business. Creating new offerings using the breadth of our business is another area of focus.”
Raymond anticipates that aircraft cabin modifications, particularly interior and connectivity mods, will remain strong, although this has produced some capacity constraints. The need for greater modification capacity is one impetus for Boeing’s new partnership with German MRO giant Luft-hansa Technik (LHT).
At the start of Farnborough, Boeing confirmed LHT as its first licensed partner for cabin modifications work on 787 aircraft. That program, expected to begin in 2025, should see a larger aftermarket over the next 5-10 years. Having authorized partner status will enable LHT to design a new 787 interior, provide related engineering services and perform upgrades as well as project certification.
Although the 787 is a younger aircraft program, having first entered service nearly 13 years ago, and has longer maintenance intervals than predecessors, Raymond said the market is entering a period in which some 787s will be coming off lease. Subsequently, operators will request cabin or modification configuration changes before leasing again. “787s are going to come into that window where there’s going to be more mods or heavy maintenance activity,” he stated.
Raymond identified shortening lead times for these modification projects as an immediate priority, asserting that they are still too long. “I think some of that is related to parts instability and getting what is required to do the mod work,” he said. “Part of it is related to our certification time, and we’ve got to manage that reality. Some of it’s probably related to our own engineering flow times, so we’re focused on how we can reduce those flow times.”
While identifying constraints in the modifications segment, Raymond also contended that capacity is tight for MRO shops. He estimated that Boeing has about 50 MRO partners worldwide, in addition to its own facilities, and noted that booking maintenance slots in advance while distributing the right labor volumes to operations is an ongoing challenge for providers.
“And that footprint of where you need and want this capability changes over time as the global industry changes,” he added. “You’ve got to work with your customers and try to develop that capacity, closer to where they want it in some cases.”
Raymond also cited Boeing Shanghai Aviation Services, a joint venture among Boeing, China Eastern Airlines and the Shanghai Airport Authority, as another example of adding aftermarket capacity. The venture broke ground on a new MRO facility in Shanghai’s Lin-gang Special Area in June.
In recent years, Boeing has expanded its passenger-to-freighter conversion lines to nearly 20 worldwide; such programs as the 737-800 converted freighter have enjoyed high customer demand. The company is also considering the possibility of a 787 converted freighter option. However, Raymond noted a slight softening in this market; capacity is returning to belly cargo on passenger aircraft as post-pandemic flight volumes continue to rise.
As Boeing’s former chief sustainability officer, Raymond also envisages more attention to that issue. He said the OEM’s digital business is integrating more tools into FliteDeck Pro, a mobile charting application developed by subsidiary Jeppesen. “Efficient routings, emissions reporting . . . we’re even working on contrails now,” he noted. “Did we create a contrail or not? What is the impact of that on emissions? That’s a whole field of study in and of itself right now.”
For BGS, Raymond pointed to aircraft modifications as ripe for improving recyclability in the interior. Boeing’s ecoDemonstrator project, which tests aviation safety and sustainability projects on a 777-200ER, has been a platform for some of these initiatives.
“We’re working with things like stow bins being recycled, plastics, the carpeting,” he explained. “Can we make that more biodegradable at the end of its life? We know how to do aluminum and titanium, as those are well-formed recycling industries. By right, an aircraft is pretty recyclable, but we still throw away pieces of interiors at end of life, so we’ve got to work on the recyclability of the interior parts of the aircraft.”
