Design for Service: Harmonising Product Design With a Services Strategy

Abstract

Over the last 10 years, the airline industry has come under increasing pressure to reduce operating costs and provide an improved service in an environment of declining revenues. As a result, operators expect engine suppliers to provide more efficient and reliable products and services, with lower and more predictable operating costs. In particular, the creation of long term service agreement offerings such as Rolls-Royce TotalCare™ align the goals of the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) and the operator in ensuring that engines keep flying with minimal disruption at minimised cost. Whilst great strides can be made to optimise cost of ownership around existing products the real potential for quantum reductions comes when the product and service are designed in harmony. This requires a cultural shift from ‘offering a Service around an existing Product’ to ‘designing a Service and the Product that supports it’. In 2002 a programme was launched within Rolls-Royce plc to create and deploy an improved process for ensuring our new products are truly ‘Designed for Service’. This has encompassed a cultural change programme, working practice and process changes, enhanced tools and technique development and embodiment of control systems within the design change process gates. The Trent 1000 engine for the Boeing 787 is the first Rolls-Royce new product to have fully deployed ‘Design for Service’ from its earliest stages of preliminary design. The process has already driven both architectural and detailed design change. This attention to detail from the earliest stages of design is fully expected to ensure that the Trent 1000 is the lowest cost of ownership solution for the Boeing 787 aircraft. This paper discusses the elements of the process, including some of the problems and successes experienced during this initial application.