Category: The Logbook

How a Multi-Unit Aviation Company Steered Toward Success

By Bob Percy

Aviation is my specialty – I’ve worked in this industry for over 25 years. Before coming to JetRight Aerospace Holdings, LLC, I worked at Embraer Aircraft Maintenance Services as the COO and Managing Director. During my tenure, we implemented an excellence program, where I learned a lot about how to implement lean processes in organizations to improve the quality of customer experience, and where it quickly became a career focus of mine. When I founded JetRight Aerospace Holdings and its child company JetRight, I wanted to not only provide excellent services in all things aviation and aerospace, but also to pass on our business knowledge to up-and-coming aviation businesses.

On one side of the business, we provide a variety of aviation and aerospace services, including charter services, fleet management, maintenance and more. But also as a holding group, our other function is buying small- to mid-sized companies that need help taking off and making sure they have the right foundational pieces to move forward on their own – things like strong company culture, employee engagement, revenue streams and quality safety systems.

In the two years since we started, we’ve grown to 58 people and three business units on our services side. Plus, on the holding group side, we have four different development program tracks that we offer: our “Quality SMS” program focusing on building better quality and safety systems, our “Fuel” program focusing on maintaining the well-being of employees and associates, our “Grow” program focusing on associate development and our “Rewards” program focusing on creating formal reward and recognition programs. Needless to say, we have a lot of moving parts and have managed a lot of growth in a short time.

We have been successful in helping the companies we take under our wing because our own team is already flying straight. With the help of our business coach David Pierce from Petra Coach and the Rockefeller Habits – the business strategies that the legendary John D. Rockefeller used to build his empire – we’ve now made our different units, programs and people feel and function like one.

The good news is that other companies can take advantage of what we’ve learned and achieve similar growth. Here’s how:

Align the team

Our business coach helped us realize that the first step is not to set sales goals or 10-year initiatives – it’s to make sure we have the right foundations in place. Keeping everyone on the same page across many moving parts is made significantly easier when we can all unite under the same core principles. After all, alignment is the key facet of the Rockefeller Habits.

In our first-ever planning session, we worked to outline our core values and core purpose. That doesn’t mean that we came up with them out of thin air, but that we discovered them. We told stories about people who epitomized who we are as a company and what they specifically did that stood out. As we talked, key words and phrases appeared. We realized those were the values we already had, but they had not been identified and promoted within the company. Similarly, we were led through a process to define our core purpose – we all knew what we did, of course, but it was important to state it in a way that means something and is motivational.

We worked together as one team so that these foundations would encompass everything that all our units and divisions would hold dear and implement every day. Now, our core purpose, “Give businesses the tools and resources they need to ‘knock it out of the park,’” and our core values – such as “attention to detail” and “whatever it takes” – are things that we practice across the whole business. We make sure to use them in our everyday language, in how we hire, in the partnerships we form and in the work we do.

Once we had our foundations in place, we could look ahead and set goals. The three business units meet together to discuss five-year and 10-year goals, as well as our annual goals. Then each unit has its own quarterly planning session to outline three-month goals that support the bigger initiatives. This process ensures we’re all aligned with where we want to go, while having the freedom to get there in the best way for each business unit.

As a result of our alignment, we all have a mutual understanding and appreciation of what the company values, what we’re here to do and what we want to accomplish, which has instilled deep pride in our company and our work.

Focus on people

We got into this business to do things differently than what we had seen before – meaning: to do it right. We wanted to create a company staffed with a group of like-hearted people that work hard to impress customers in every aspect that we can.

To do that, we’ve always made our people part of the equation. We say “people + process = profit,” and we live by that. We place a big focus on the well-being of our employees, rather than only focusing on processes or revenue. In turn, the result has been streamlined processes and increased revenue.

We’ve been very intentional about developing a culture where team members feel supported and engaged. This can entail group initiatives like company events, birthday celebrations and publicly recognizing team members’ “wins,” as well as one-on-one interactions, mentorship and letting people voice their concerns. Each piece of our culture helps our team bond and work together for something bigger than what any one person could accomplish.

We’ve found that if you make employees’ jobs easier and more enjoyable, then they’ll be able to assist the customer better. That’s the true secret formula to customer service.

Improve continuously

To make sure we are constantly impressing our customers and blowing their expectations out of the water, we make it a priority to continuously improve ourselves – individually and as a company. We work with Petra to make our own culture and processes better, so we can also set up the companies we oversee for their own success. Plus, we place a high value on ongoing personal and professional development.

Our organization is unique in that we get to help a lot of different companies improve, even while we seek to improve, and I’d say we learn as much from them as they do from us. When companies leave our group and move on to function independently, they have the groundwork in place to keep the momentum going, and we are confident that we can help more companies like them.

As our business coach has told us many times, “You can’t change a company in six months or less, but by implementing these tactics little by little, you’ll start to see the improvement over time. When you look back in one, two, three years, you’ll see how far you’ve come.” And that’s proven to be true. In a company like ours, it’s crucial that the changes happen across the board. That way, we’ll all be on the same page as we move toward continued success.

Bob Percy is founding partner and chief operating officer of JetRight Aerospace Holdings. He is a diversified aviation and aerospace professional with deep experience in leadership, technical operations and continuous improvement programs, and his specialties include team growth, operations management, organizational strategy, strategic growth, continuous improvement programs and quality and safety systems. He is a champion of JetRight’s mission to be an all-around example of excellence.

Shifting Balance of Power Creates a Need for Supply Chain Optimization

By:

Increased military spending, a shifting balance of global power and the re-drawing of traditional theaters are only a few of the many factors putting pressure on the military’s efforts to support the warfighter. Today and in the near future, the greatest challenge to the military may not be the threat of foreign aggression, but the threat of an inadequate supply chain which cannot keep up with the needs and requirements of the thousands of contracts, and which cannot keep up with the Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) imperative for existing aircraft.

Optimizing the supply chain

These complexities can be overcome through improved end-to-end supply chain collaboration and integration, which would benefit the warfighter effort with better and faster access to the large body of materiel required, as well as commercial suppliers which would be better able to keep up with the demand.

We’re also seeing some of the same challenges facing commercial suppliers, with new commercial aircraft orders and deliveries reaching new records, also putting the same pressure on commercial aircraft supply chains and operations as are being seen on the military side. This increase in commercial demand is creating a knock-on effect on firms which service the needs of the military. Addressing these challenges is key to commercial suppliers improving their book-to-bill ratios, an issue that has been raised by several analysts.

From a commercial perspective, suppliers must fuel their own revenue and margins by accelerating time-to-completion – the result of which not only enhances their own value-for-money, but also enhances the results for the Pentagon.

Blending commercial best practice with the needs of the military is key to achieving measurable improvement across the military buy-make-move-fulfill supply chain, an approach seen in Total Value Optimization™ (TVO) methodologies. The TVO process allows an organization to dynamically anticipate and meet demand by synchronizing the buy-make-move-fulfill supply chain to deliver the most value at the lowest cost to the organization. There are significant levels of untapped optimization opportunities at present due to existing siloed thinking, and a lack of integration internally and with the supply base.

Collaboration and best practices can be used to benefit both commercial suppliers and the military. Sharing facilities where it makes sense for example, as opposed to setting up completely different facilities for C&D checks, would generate tremendous savings opportunities.

To facilitate mission-ready military capability, and address the need for greater asset availability, cost efficiency, and maintenance effectiveness, the solution lies in driving optimization across maintenance and supply chains quickly. On the commercial side, those supplying the military must fuel revenue and margins by accelerating time-to-completion as well as improving their own end-to-end supply chains – thereby driving value-for-money for them and for the Pentagon as well.

In a true win-win scenario, optimizing the supply chain benefits both commercial supplier and the military consumer, with tactics like:

  • Eliminating the siloed supply chain environment
  • Significantly strengthening the collaboration and integration within the given culture
  • Improving availability of cash to spend on repair and acquisitions
  • Reducing overall repair and overhaul time
  • Reduce overall cycle time with improved procurement methods
  • Increasing overall operational capacity

The approach is critical to gaining buy-in and generating accelerated results. Tactics include leveraging industry experienced resources and partnering with company leadership and management to:

  1. Focus on identifying and defining the quantified real value to pursue and agree upon a specific accelerated timeline
  2. Validation of the operational maturity to assure improvements enhance the supply chain process, directly supporting the Art of the Possible
  3. Design and execute a pragmatic step-by-step aligned roadmap that retains focus and accelerates the expected results

The current administration has allocated $60 billion in additional funds to the military, contributing to a total military budget of over $700 billion. Making use of these funds and managing the $300 billion in contracts executed by the Pentagon, may be well allocated for defense of new frontiers, but that level of investment requires more than merely purchasing more airplanes. It requires a heightened level of optimization of the military’s people, processes and assets. New equipment and technologies may be the most visible part of military spending strategies, but in reality, management and optimization of the supply chain at the back end – which nobody sees – is what makes it all work.

End-to-end supply chain collaboration

End-to-end supply chain collaboration and optimization strategies will ensure that the military’s missions will be carried out effectively, the funds spent judiciously and the usable life of existing investments extended. Leveraging best practices in this area can be an untapped source of efficiencies, cost savings, faster delivery of products, and an improved MRO framework. Those best practices, and untapped opportunities, are highlighted in a recent white paper from the Global Supply Chain Institute at the University of Tennessee, entitled “End-to-end supply chain collaboration best practices.”

High-profile aircraft such as the F-35 added tremendous capabilities to warfighter efforts, but experienced significant delays and cost overruns with over two decades of development and testing, making its first combat mission only this year when the Israeli Air Force used the fifth-generation stealth aircraft to strike two different targets.

Lengthy development cycles as seen in the F-35 put pressure on the military to extend the life of legacy fighter aircraft such as the F-15, F-16 and F/A 18 to be extended thousands of hours beyond what was called for in their original design plans. Doing so is necessary and possibly even advantageous, but it requires Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) to occur much faster than originally planned, and the number of MRO flow days required to bring these legacy aircraft to total service capability must be reduced.

Achieving a state of readiness – and gaining full value from our military investment – can be achieved with a renewed focus on optimizing both the maintenance and supply chains. Driving this end-to-end supply chain collaboration could unlock hundreds of millions of dollars, both for the Pentagon and for commercial suppliers.

David Kleine is Executive Vice President Aerospace, Industrial Manufacturing & Services at Maine Pointe. He has more than 30 years of consulting, supply chain and operations experience mainly working in the manufacturing, high tech, aerospace and financial services industries. In the private equity and financial services sectors, David has generated over $7 billion in private equity funds for sale or acquisition on behalf of clients such as The Carlyle Group, ONEX, Permira and Goldman Sachs. Email: dkleine@mainepointe.com.

Alfred Baumbuschis Executive Vice President Operations, North America at Maine Pointe. He is an accomplished corporate leader with a 25-year track record at the helm of both domestic and foreign-owned companies. As an experienced C-level executive and international consultant, his expertise spans the full breadth of executive leadership with specific strengths driving large and medium-scale companies through organizational change. Email: abaumbusch@mainepointe.com.