When an airplane isn’t flying it isn’t making money. Data quality, completeness and availability are the backbone of an effective and efficient engine repair. That’s how a maintenance provider makes their money. In fact, GE Aerospace MRO services generated 18.3 billion dollars in revenue in 2022. A good maintenance plan and a speedy shop visit is a win for everyone. It’s complicated stuff, and I had the pleasure of helping to visualize and make sense of it all.
So with hundreds of engines needing various levels of support at OEM and licensed partner shops at any given time across the globe, it’s no wonder things get complicated quickly. For the GE Aviation Services business, my job was to visualize that complexity, customer touch points, the actors involved. To find where data is and isn’t flowing. And of course, map any pain points and Lean improvement opportunities along the way.
I partnered with UX Researcher Carl Stevens to assess everything from 30 year forecasts, to 30 day engine overhauls, to the 30 pounds of paperwork that travel with an engine when it is delivered to an MRO facility. We interviewed stakeholders and poured over available VOC to understand variance across 7 shops and 13 products.
My direct contributions to this effort included a research plan, research outcomes and findings decks. The shop and business operations personas and service blueprint I produced are living documentation that is designed to evolve with the people and processes they portray.
After two quarters of discovery, Carl and I were able to equip the business with a wealth of insights. In a Lean manufacturing environment, UX design isn’t always the way to directly improve a process. What this initiative did successfully was to serve as a catalyst for change. It gave context to those building solutions, improved decision making capabilities of the business, and provided measurable and structured KPIs for process and data flow improvement efforts. Our work served as pre-work to a Lean Value Stream Mapping initiative and subsequent kaizen events that have improved shop performance, improving turnaround time for customers and shop profitability. Our artifacts have helped designers and developers make smarter bets on the digital products that drive the processes.