MHIRJ Combines Japanese And West Virginian Strategies For MRO Growth

What do you get when you combine Japanese continuous improvement strategies with a mechanically savvy former coal mining community in need of job opportunities? Aircraft maintenance provider MHIRJ hopes this pairing will propel considerable workforce growth, faster turnarounds and happier employees as it seeks to expand its business.

The company has launched two new initiatives: a Bay of Excellence concept based on the engineering efficiency strategies of its parent company, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and an in-house training program called MHIRJ Academy that provides career upskilling for the local community.

As MHIRJ has moved beyond its sole focus of providing CRJ maintenance to more platform-agnostic work, the company’s growing business has begun to require a larger labor pool and new strategies to complete work faster.

“We have more business opportunities coming at us than we can possibly fulfill with the number of employees we have today,” says Ross Mitchell, MHIRJ senior vice president of strategy and business development. At its service center in Bridgeport, West Virginia, MHIRJ employs about 400 technicians, but Chief Operating Officer Ismail Mokabel notes that the company needs more than 200 additional technicians for the work in its pipeline over the next 18 months—and it plans to grow beyond that.

“The industry is short on technicians right now, and one of the areas where we’re really feeling the pressure is with structures technicians,” says Chad Hill, director of MHIRJ’s quality assurance service center network. “The market’s just not there. To come up with a solution to inject some talent into our business, we really wanted to lean on the local community who have excellent mechanical abilities but lack the transition into the aviation industry.”

Launched in May, MHIRJ Academy is a tuition-free, eight-week program that pays participants while they receive technical training in aviation sheet metal. If students pass all course requirements, they are offered a job with MHIRJ upon completion.

Although MHIRJ advertised the program on social media, the majority of interest so far has been generated through word of mouth in the local community. By the time MHIRJ Academy graduated its first cohort of students in June, it had reached close to 400 applicants—more than 300 of whom heard about the program from current employees.

Michael Genin, director of operations at MHIRJ’s Bridgeport facility, says the area was primed for this type of program by job losses in its previously booming industries, including coal, oil and gas. In addition to participants who are transitioning from technical industries of that sort, recent high school graduates are joining the academy as well.

“The [students] who came here used to be car mechanics or were working in a hardware store, and within eight weeks, they’re actually doing very complex sheet metal projects that are aviation-grade,” Mokabel says. “Fast-forward five years, and I truly believe this will be the center for creating sheet metal technicians in the U.S.”

Mokabel says this local recruiting model has been crucial to achieving high retention and engagement because participants are looking to build a new career locally instead of opting for temporary jobs. “They build economic benefit for the community, it raises the level of workforce around us, and as we attract and grow [participants], we help the community grow as well,” he says.

MHIRJ Academy instructor Kenny Sinclair says that although the inaugural class went through some growing pains, the lessons learned will help the program continue to succeed. “Eight weeks is really not a lot of time to learn a structures technician position, but we feel that we’ve given [students] a really good foundation to pursue this career, and we’re going to continue learning,” he says. Sinclair also hopes to keep increasing the percentage of women involved in the program.

Hill says MHIRJ has boosted efforts over the past decade to recruit more women. “What we do is not heavy lifting. It’s not big wrenches and diesel mechanics—it’s fine manipulation, attention to detail and following instructions,” he says, noting that women often excel at such skills. “All of [the women] we’ve brought into the workforce have done extremely well,” he says.

MHIRJ is looking at expanding the MHIRJ Academy to other locations, such as MHIRJ’s service center in Tucson, Arizona, or into other types of training. “It’s the reason we labeled it the ‘academy’ rather than the ‘sheet metal training facility’ or something like that,” Hill says. “This will be used for future generations for employee development across the business.”

Meanwhile, the Bridgeport facility continues to recruit labor through other traditional methods, such as its apprenticeship program and collaborations with local colleges. Two new college programs recently launched in West Virginia—Marshall University’s aviation maintenance technician program at Huntington Tri-State Airport and Pierpont Community and Technical College’s new aviation maintenance training facility at North Central West Virginia Airport. Genin says the latter program, which will enable Pierpont to increase annual enrollment to 200 students, is expected to be a particularly prolific pipeline for MHIRJ.

Genin says MHIRJ’s apprenticeship recruiting strategy mirrors that of MHIRJ Academy. “I’m looking for people who love working on tractors and things like that because they have a little bit of that mechanical aptitude already in their back pocket,” he says. “Everybody’s fishing out of the same pond and looking for the same people, so that’s one way we can separate ourselves. It’s a short-term program for a long-term fix, and we’re going to reap the benefits.”

INNOVATING WORKFLOWS

MHIRJ also is rolling out strategies to simplify workflows for its existing workforce through its Bay of Excellence initiative, which tests new technologies and strategies.

“Bay of Excellence is a merger between the Japanese continuous improvement mindset and American and Canadian ingenuity to bring these concepts together for the first time in MRO at that level and that scale,” Mokabel says, referring to MHIRJ’s parent company, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, and its engineering operations in Canada.

To formulate the concept, MHIRJ brought together industrial engineers, its IT organization and technicians to determine ways to reduce distractions and wasted time inside the hangar. The aim was to embed industrial engineering motions in how MHIRJ flows aircraft through its facilities and bring information to technicians’ fingertips.

One seemingly simple way MHIRJ has streamlined operations is through tool-control efforts. It established rooms specifically dedicated to storing technician toolboxes, which has freed up hangar floor space. “It seems like a simple thing, but it’s a big thing,” Genin says. “It keeps everything clean, and cleanliness is happiness.”

MHIRJ also has deployed Empower-MX software as part of efforts to go paperless. Technicians can access information via iPads running the software, which Mokabel says “really helps us flow the aircraft and manage the resource allocation on the aircraft in the most optimal way.”

In initial Bay of Excellence testing, Ismail says MHIRJ has seen a 10-15% improvement in productivity, which he believes can grow to 20% as the concept is deployed more widely and refined.

Mokabel says employees are happier with the improvements. “I’d say employee engagement is the highest it’s ever been. It’s one of the projects that really showed the most amount of bottom-up engagement because we spoke to our employees, and we’ve simplified their lives,” he says. “We want to fix all the irritants they used to go through in their daily activities. It’s really tailored toward creating the ideal experience for our employees.”

MHIRJ is looking at ways to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) to further enhance its Bay of Excellence innovations. When asked whether the technology might be met with skepticism, Mokabel said obtaining buy-in would be like translating suggestions from Japanese industrial engineers through the Bay of Excellence.

“It’s our job to showcase how these tools are going to improve and enhance their experience,” he says. “As long as we use the same formula as the Bay of Excellence, . . . I think there will be mass adoption of AI and the benefits it brings to the floor. There will be buy-in if we do our job right.”

Genin notes that the Bridgeport facility has implemented regular processes to solicit employee feedback and suggestions, such as a quarterly roundtable meeting with representatives from various departments. He says this format was more fruitful than asking for feedback during large meetings where employees might be too timid to ask tough questions.

“It’s a more intimate situation. I basically sit down, shut up and just let them talk, and that’s a big thing. I want to make sure they have a say,” Genin says. “We can’t get everything they want, but [when] they see we’re working on it and making improvements from their suggestions, you get the buy-in from the team, and you’re going to have much better success.”