AEROREPORT: Let’s be hon­est, B2B prod­uct mar­ket­ing can be bor­ing. Why should people read on from here?

Martin Friis-Petersen: Well, prod­uct mar­ket­ing might not al­ways be ex­cit­ing, but en­gines are!

When my mar­ket­ing team came to me and said they want­ed to do an im­age film about a typical en­gine as part of the launch, my first thought was skep­ti­cism, be­cause it doesn’t ex­ist. But then I re­al­ized that is the point. At MTU we don’t deal in typ­i­cal.

What then?

Each en­gine is flown in a dif­fer­ent man­ner, in a dif­fer­ent en­vi­ron­ment and by a dif­fer­ent oper­a­tor. So of course it has in­di­vid­ual needs. It is about serv­ing those needs in the best pos­sible way and with­out any waste.

More of what you need, less of what you don’t.

Ex­act­ly! If you take our prod­uct SAVE^Plus for in­stance. This is a cus­tomized so­lu­tion for ma­ture en­gines. And it fo­cus­es sole­ly on re­duc­ing cost for the re­main­ing ser­vice life of the en­gine. Some­times that is a cus­tomer say­ing “I need 7,000 more cy­cles can you build me an en­gine to fly that, or pro­vide an ex­change en­gine that suits my op­er­a­tional re­quire­ments,” and oth­er times it is us say­ing to the cus­tomer, “a full over­haul is un­nec­es­sary cost, how about a lease en­gine.” Of course, this can be ap­plied to en­tire fleets too. Then it be­comes an ex­cit­ing cost puz­zle with greater re­wards.

Do you see mar­ket de­mand for ma­ture en­gine con­cepts?

For sure! We’re cur­rent­ly of­fer­ing these kind of ser­vices for e.g. CF6-80C2 en­gines, but as the V2500-A5 and CFM56-7 en­gine fleets age, this will be­come ex­treme­ly rel­e­vant. The in­stalled fleet is large and the en­gines are start­ing to ma­ture. As they do so, MRO costs will in­crease due to need for heav­ier shop vis­its and ma­te­r­i­al re­place­ment. In fact, many will be re­tired over the next 10 years as the 737 Max and A320neos en­ter in­to ser­vice with air­lines.

What else have you got in the goody bag?

Per­son­al­ly, I have a soft spot for MOVE^Plus. This is a so­lu­tion for lessors that mit­i­gates risk and gen­er­ates more rev­enue through portable MRO. We’ve no­ticed lessors are tak­ing an in­creased in­ter­est in MRO de­ci­sions and want to be in­volved in tran­si­tions be­tween lessees, man­ag­ing and op­ti­miz­ing main­te­nance re­serves and choos­ing the tim­ing of shop vis­its. We give them that and a whole lot more. Such as fast re­mar­ketabil­i­ty of as­sets through easy trans­fers and pre­dictable costs. And of course, ac­cess to the MTU brain.

The brain was cho­sen as the sym­bol for the new port­fo­lio. Why?

We have a whole lot of ded­i­ca­tion too, so it could have al­so been the heart. But when it comes down to it, that is where we make the dif­fer­ence. Our col­lec­tive brain. MTU is full of ex­perts, ex­perts who cre­ate the best so­lu­tions for our cus­tomers with great pas­sion. And while the brain is the sym­bol for the port­fo­lio, we are al­so show­ing our peo­ple.

Why do you think the new port­fo­lio will sur­prise the mar­ket?

If I’m bru­tal­ly hon­est, no one in the mar­ket place has been los­ing sleep won­der­ing when the next MTU Main­te­nance prod­uct will be re­leased. But, it is our job to spot mar­ket trends and en­sure our port­fo­lio is meet­ing the cus­tomer re­quire­ments of to­mor­row. This was one of the rea­sons be­hind re­defin­ing our prod­uct and ser­vices port­fo­lio.

But we have a lot to of­fer. We’ve been do­ing MRO for near­ly 40 years, and to be frank, we’re re­al­ly good at it. As an in­de­pen­dent ser­vice provider, our fo­cus is on giv­ing the cus­tomer that lit­tle bit more so they come to us. We have to go the ex­tra mile, oth­er­wise we won’t sur­vive.

Usu­al­ly, that means cost sav­ings. For in­stance, PERFORM^Plus is about gen­er­at­ing more flight hours at low­er cost with cus­tomized MRO. We use cus­tomized workscop­ing, al­ter­na­tive re­pairs, en­gine trend mon­i­tor­ing and on-site ser­vices to op­ti­mize on-wing times.

What is it when it isn’t cost sav­ings?

Gen­er­at­ing in­come. Which is what we do with VALUE^Plus. This is a so­lu­tion for as­set own­ers to help them get the most out of their as­sets at end-of-life. It could be any­thing from a di­rect sale to tear­down or pro­longed lease-out, for in­stance.

As an MRO provider, lessor, as­set man­ag­er and parts trad­er, we can guar­an­tee the best solu­tion for cus­tomers. Across all our port­fo­lio.

Can you tell us a bit more about the faces pre­sent­ing these prod­ucts?

Yes, they are all mem­bers of the MRO pro­grams team.