Very light jets using the new PW600 range of engines are to benefit from significantly reduced maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) costs due to reduced downtime, according to Pratt & Whitney Canada.
Mike Perodeau, vice-president, corporate aviation and military programmes, says that the new PW600 range of turbofans have been manufactured to allow hot section inspection on the wing.
“Before we put pen to paper on the PW600 we wanted to introduce a modularity concept for the design to assist the assembly process and future maintenance,” says Perodeau. “This has helped create an engine that features not only high performance and reliability characteristics, but will also improve availability and reduce downtime to the customer through hot section inspection on the wing. It basically features fewer parts.”
Perodeau adds that this “lean” approach to the manufacture and assembly of the PW600s that was designed to reduce assembly and testing time for each engine from the standard of eight days down to 8h.
“We’ve constructed a new state-of-the-art ‘lean technology’ assembly facility at Longueuil to achieve this goal,” says Perodeau. “It houses not only all our own people involved in the programme, but also our suppliers as well. We’ll be able to assemble and test all within our 8h timeframe.”
The PW600 assembly and test plant was inaugurated in March, the same week the first PW615F engine was delivered to Cessna for its Citation Mustang.
Perodeau says the plant will start ramping up production from 500 engines this year up to a forecasted 2,000 from 2007. “We’re already starting to deliver engines for the Mustang and are on track with the PW610 for the Eclipse 500 and the PW617 for Embraer’s Phenom 100,” he confirms.
With an amalgamation of competitive specific fuel consumption (SFC), weight and a reduced parts count, Perodeau believes the PW600s be popular with European business users as much as their US counterparts. “The VLJ market will be popular all over, not just in North America. There’s a lot of potential in Europe and I believe the interest we will get at EBACE will support this. There are many European individuals and companies who need such a business tool. And eastern Europe is also an exciting market.”
Source: Flight Daily News