Engine makers face reformation
The two focal regions for Germany’s jet engine business are Berlin-Brandenburg and Bavaria. The manufacturers and suppliers in Bavaria’s aircraft engine industry are working hard on strengthening their mutual networks to enhance their competitiveness.
The Bavarian engine industry accounts for 8% of the global market. Its big opportunity to differentiate its customer base lies in participating in new programs. It will be necessary to develop new engine concepts in the medium and long term. The situation is similar when it comes to the materials and manufacturing methods employed. Existing expertise can continue to be employed for machining the materials of the upcoming generation (such as TiAl). This is one of the strengths of the Bavarian jet engine industry. But the importance of matrix composite materials is set to increase in the medium to long term, and the right production methods have yet to be developed for these materials.
These are some of the findings of a recent study entitled `engine bavAIRia´. Given that manufacturers and suppliers in the Bavarian engine industry are keen to strengthen their mutual networks, they got together with bavAIRia e.V., the organization for the management of the aviation and aerospace cluster in Bavaria, to jointly found a working group just over a year ago called `engine bavAIRia – aircraft engine manufacturing in Bavaria´.
Its members, MTU Aero Engines, Aerotech Peissenberg, Atena Engineering, FAG Aerospace (Schaeffler Group), Leistritz Turbomaschinen Technik and Karl Binder, commissioned bavAIRia and Roland Berger Strategy Consultants to analyze the situation concerning engine manufacturing in Bavaria and to come up with concrete recommendations for action to position and strengthen the value chain for aircraft engines in Bavaria.
The `engine bavAIRia´ study led into a working program for the Bavarian engine industry in consultation with the Bavarian State Ministry for Economics, Infrastructure, Transport and Technology between February and May 2008. Jochen Schmid, Project Manager at bavAIRia, draws an early conclusion: “With technological and cost competition getting tougher, suppliers must enter into closer partnerships with manufacturers and should be prepared to shoulder more of the risks.”
One idea is that the suppliers can form an umbrella company with which they can jointly achieve the critical mass they need, especially in terms of capital,” according to the working program. The experts also recommend establishing a regional production partnership for engine construction. This would bundle the value added by the various suppliers to form a more sophisticated product offering. This would create “a single interface to the OEMs or system companies” and make better use of supplier potential in the region. It would also shorten lead times and tie up less capital. On the technology side, the switch from conventional aircraft to `More Electric Aircraft´ (MEA) offers numerous opportunities to build on and exploit the existing expertise in Bavaria. To this end, there are plans to develop the new `More Electric Engine´ (MEE) center of competence at the Bundeswehr University in Munich. From a technological perspective, the study shows that core competencies in Bavarian aircraft engine construction lie in the “hot zone” – in the core engine. The industry will need to achieve cross-company collaboration on production methods for titanium aluminides as well as titanium and nickel-based alloys. (kn )
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