StandardAero is a leading independent Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) provider within the aerospace industry. The company caters to a diverse clientele, offering extensive MRO services and tailored solutions for business aviation, commercial aviation, military, and industrial power sectors. Its global footprint spans over 50 major facilities, bolstered by strategically positioned regional service centres and supported by nearly 7,000 skilled professionals.
StandardAero thrives on overcoming aviation’s toughest challenges through innovation, collaboration, and teamwork. As a proud member of the Carlyle family, a renowned global investment firm with extensive industry knowledge spanning Corporate Private Equity, Real Assets, Global Credit, and Investment Solutions, the company is also backed by robust resources and expertise.
The challenge
StandardAero faced significant challenges due to rapid growth and expansion of their operations. Firstly, the company experienced an aggressive growth curve for two of their major long-term engine programs, necessitating a substantial increase in their capacity and capabilities to meet the rising demand. Additionally, the acquisition of a strategically critical local company introduced new MRO programs into their portfolio, further fuelling the need for growth and adaptation.
The company recognised that to successfully manage and sustain this planned growth, a significant transformation was required in their core systems, processes, and most importantly, their people’s approach to planning, executing activities, interacting, and communicating daily. The existing methods and structures were likely inadequate to handle the increased workload and complexity efficiently.
To address these challenges, StandardAero implemented operational leadership and structural changes throughout 2023. These changes aimed to better facilitate and enable the necessary initiatives that would secure sustainable growth in the long run. The company sought to overhaul its operations, streamline processes, and empower its workforce to meet the demands of the expanding business.
the solution
StandardAero partnered with Sharing in Growth to provide valued support and coaching to key personnel within the company. This collaboration was intended to assist StandardAero in navigating the complexities of rapid growth, optimisation, and ensuring a smooth transition to their new, larger scale of operations.
Sharing in Growth provided critical support to StandardAero’s transformation and growth initiatives through a range of interventions. Sharing in Growth facilitated strategic planning workshops, such as the “Business Policy Deployment”, to align organisational objectives with operational execution plans and established visual management tools such as the Obeya Room and Planning & Execution Asset Control Board. These initiatives promoted transparency, communication, and real-time performance tracking across StandardAero’s operations.
Additionally, Sharing in Growth conducted focused improvement events, such as the Kaizen event for the TFE cell, which enabled significant output increases and efficiency gains. Sharing in Growth also developed growth schematic plans, helping StandardAero visualise long-term roadmaps and generate new thinking around navigating their growth journey successfully.
Crucially, Sharing in Growth provided consistent coaching to StandardAero’s leadership and continuous improvement teams. This coaching addressed gaps in crucial processes like Sales, Inventory & Operational Planning (SIOP), secured commitment for upgrades, and embedded sustainable change capabilities within the organisation. Regular one-on-one coaching further reinforced StandardAero’s ability to drive lasting improvements and support their aggressive growth plans effectively.
THE RESULTS
The Business Policy Deployment mechanism, in conjunction with the Obeya Room function, has delivered much stronger clarity of business direction setting, giving multiple business functions a forum to articulate how they are planning to contribute to overall business growth and escalate requirement for support if needed. Furthermore, the impact of daily planning and execution board meetings has delivered greater clarity of commitments and priorities between all functions, resulting in higher levels of asset outputs and reduction in overall lead times.
The Kaizen event delivered transformational change to achieve ramp up capability of six outputs per month through improved daily management, layout and flow optimisation, enhanced visual management for greater capability of tracking hours/progress and more.
Growth schematics gave programme leadership within each area a greater understanding of future load and capacity requirement for both resource and equipment, but also identified new processing steps to significantly improve efficiencies. StandardAero has also engaged with an onsite Business Analyst team to integrate the full utility of their Navixa ERP system. Finally, the internal lead CI resource is now independently and successfully facilitating transformational change and business policy deployment workshops within the group.
As a result, the TFE Engine cell capability ramped up to support increase from three to six units per month, along with efficiency and Turnaround Time (TAT) improvements. The cell now has a clear process flow and resource requirement to increase output. The TFE Engine improvements achieved, lead to the cell receiving the prestigious Chief Executive Officer`s Global True Blue award for Financial Year 2023. StandardAero also received two Rolls Royce Annual Authorised Maintenance Centre (AMC) awards for both Quality & Excellence from the T56 Engine programme.
The Project “Optiflow” initiative is also ongoing for standardised storage and transportation of parts within the Engines Business unit – this will support efficiency improvements within Cycle 1 and Cycle 3. Finally, effective lean leadership behavioural training has been deployed to support StandardAero’s team leads.
“It’s been a successful collaboration with Sharing In Growth over the past few years. The knowledge and expertise they have shared with us have been paramount to the maturity and development of both our processes and people within the Engines Business Unit.”
JOANNE PIDGEON
BUSINESS ANALYST AND UK CI LEAD
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