A well kept secret: Chromalloy. Alot of people don t know what our capability INDUSTRY FOCUS

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1 A well kept secret: Chromalloy For half a century this US company has concentrated on turbine technology, becoming a specialist in the hot section aftermarket. Now, hotter than ever before, the firm is gearing up for expansion and increasing incremental market share. Alot of people don t know what our capability is, says Armand Lauzon, president of Chromalloy and CEO of parent corporation Sequa. Although the brand is well known in the aerospace industry the company is officially registered as Chromalloy Gas Turbines and despite a number of JVs with OEMs, airlines and MRO providers on either side of the Atlantic, for many it still remains a bit cloudy what Chromalloy actually does. Lauzon reports that more often than not, after talking about his company, listeners are surprised by its breadth of capabilities. We have been a well kept secret, he reflects. This now seems set to change along with a range of other business areas which the former GE engineer has set his sights on since he took over the helm in July The company specialises in three basic areas: gas turbine parts repair, including coating, for aero engines, APUs and aero-derivative applications; PMA part production; and overhaul services for JT8D engines, APUs and industrial/marine gas turbine engines. It is a 12 Aircraft Technology - Issue 101

2 Armand Lauzon, president of Chromalloy and CEO of parent corporation Sequa. You see a tremendous amount of ingenuity of our repairs. They [the process developers] always find a way to repair something. They don t like to throw anything away. Armand Lauzon, president of Chromalloy and CEO of Sequa wholly owned subsidiary of Orangeburg, New York-headquartered Sequa, together with two companies: Precoat Metals, based in St. Louis, Missouri, which applies protective coatings to raw metals for the manufacturing industry; and Sequa Automotive in Bridgeport, Connecticut, which produces airbag inflators, sensors and electrical equipment for cars. With approximately 4,000 employees at 31 locations in 14 countries around the globe, Chromalloy is the largest company or as Lauzon would have it the crown jewel within the Sequa corporation. The company has recently moved its headquarters from San Antonio, Texas, to its largest facility in Orangeburg. Chromalloy had long been on the wishlist of Sequa-owner Carlyle Group, the largest private equity company in the world, according to Private Equity International s PEI50 ranking. Carlyle Group was established in 1987 around the aerospace sector and had been looking at the then privately-owned Sequa/Chromalloy constellation for years, before it eventually had the opportunity to make the acquisition in December They [Carlyle] know their way round the aerospace world very well, believes Lauzon; so Chromalloy falls within their sweet spot. Vertical integration and broad capabilities The main differentiator that sets Chromalloy apart from its competitors in the engine MRO sector is its casting capability. The company has two facilities one in Tampa, Florida, and another one in Carson City, Nevada which concentrate on casting spare parts, including turbine blades and vanes with internal cooling air passageways. This is an area of expertise where even some OEMs depend on external partners. The Carson City facility has approximately 15 years of casting experience, and the one in Tampa had already been an established investment casting firm when it was acquired by Chromalloy in Building on and expanding this existing experience and competence is crucial for Lauzon to maintain a competitive edge over his competitors in the market, some of whom are also trying to develop casting capabilities. But he is sure that just because you can buy the equipment, doesn t necessarily mean that you have the intellectual property and experience to be able to make a casting. The Tampa facility is currently being expanded through a $16.5m investment programme until 2010, which is central for the entire company s future growth, according to the CEO. We can make a brand new blade: we can cast it; we can machine it; we can airflow it; we can coat it; we can test it; we can bag it; and it can go right to the assembly floor... so we are completely self-contained and vertically integrated. Outside of the OEMs, there is nobody who can make that claim in the hot section of the engine. Carson City is also home to a second facility that focuses exclusively on turbine blade tip repair. The plant utilises computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) technology to repair blades with part-to-part variations in a fully automated tip restoration process. Corrosion, creep and twist change the blades profile during the engine operation cycle. The exact location, shape and extent of the damage is likely to vary across the individual blades of that turbine stage. However, these dimensional damage characteristics on each blade are automatically evaluated and recorded through a digital camera with measuring capability. This data is then fed into the software to control the automated laser head, which does the contour weld to restore the blade s original dimensions and aerodynamic qualities. Giving new life to turbine vanes with irreparably damaged aerofoil sections is another area in which the company takes particular pride. The process is named advanced airfoil replacement and basically involves cutting off the shroud, casting a new aerofoil thanks to the in-house casting capability and brazing it back on the existing shroud. While the aerofoil section is actually new, the process is still considered a repair, costing approximately 20 per cent of the price for a new OEM vane. The company is currently trying to export this DER repair to third-party MRO providers around the world. Once the co-operation has been established, the plan is to supply these firms with parts that need repairing, and earn the commission. Thus far Chromalloy has accomplished approximately 87,000 DER repairs. You see a tremendous amount of ingenuity of our repairs, says Lauzon. They [the process developers] always find a way to repair something. They don t like to throw anything away.

3 Electron beam physical vapour deposition (EB-PVD) coating process at the company s headquarter facility in Orangeburg, New York. Over the next two to three years, Lauzon aims to grow Chromalloy s revenue by 20 to 30 per cent (based on 2008 results), bringing it to an annual figure of $1.5bn. Producing just half parts, however, is not the main purpose of the casting capability. The company wants to produce whole parts and a whole lot more of them than it has been producing thus far! The magic word here is, of course, PMA. The market trend towards greater and more open use of PMA parts is the main reason for the Tampa facility expansion. Since 1991, Chromalloy has been granted 372 parts manufacturer approvals (PMAs) by the FAA, which has resulted in approximately 214,000 turbine blades and vanes that have been shipped in the marketplace to date. The number of PMAs is set to increase to more than 400 this year. This is a significant shift from the days when the subject was only talked about behind closed doors. Back in 1998, Chromalloy formed a JV named BELAG with United Airlines, Lufthansa Technik and Alitalia for the production of PMA turbine blades. The Tampa, Floridabased company received castings from the nearby Chromalloy facility, finished (machining, air-flowing, coating) and inspected the PMA aerofoils, and sold them to the shareholders and other customers. The business is going strong and its sole supplier is Chromalloy, and always will be. Going industrial Chromalloy is planning to grow in the industrial and marine gas turbine market. Providing overhaul services for aero-derivative gas turbine technology in the industrial and marine sectors the latter is mainly the US navy is the company s largest growth area aside from the main commercial and military aero engine fields. The best example is the firm s plant in San Diego, California. At the moment, this facility concentrates on overhauling and tearing down JT8D engines a finite and declining enterprise. JT8 is going to dry up at some point in the next couple of years, believes Lauzon. However, simply switching to another engine type to keep the plant going, which the company has decided to do, could prove a dangerous move. Our biggest customers are the MROs; we don t want to go in and become a competitor to our biggest customers, like Lufthansa, Delta or American. Thus the solution has to be found in a different field: maintaining GE s CF6-6 derivative LM2500 marine gas turbine engine. One of the challenges of maintaining industrial/marine gas turbines is the larger size of certain components such as blades and vanes. For Chromalloy this means it needs to develop some specialist capabilities, such as precision forging. Currently, the company is co-operating in this field with a precision forging facility in the US and another one in the UK. Over the next two to three years, Lauzon aims to grow Chromalloy s revenue by 20 to 30 per cent (based on 2008 results), bringing it to 16 Aircraft Technology - Issue 101

4 The addition of the (beige) thermal barrier coating reduces the metal temperature of this high-pressure turbine blade by more than 100 degrees. an annual figure of around $1.5bn. Moving production work overseas to countries with low labour costs, however, is not on his agenda. The CEO is confident the company can expand without transferring some of the manufacturing work outside its home country: I don t need to be in a low-cost area. I can pay going rates in the United States, and can compete with anybody in the United States. The main reason is that, despite of the labour intensity and skill level required for many of the repair processes, staff costs are less than 10 per cent of the company s total costs. At prices of up to $50 per pound (453g) for certain materials, such as uranium-based aluminium alloys, material costs form a much larger proportion in the company s total expenses. Similarly, costs for engineering and the development of repair processes, coatings, production methods etc. are also much more significant than the payroll. Assets aside from capital The company s capital for the future is the workforce, in Lauzon s view. Having this team of people motivated, focused, energised, passionate, and given opportunities to grow, Aircraft Technology - Issue

5 succeed, win and make mistakes is really where it all starts. That s the way I have always run a business; that s the way I will always run a business. I am only as good as the 4,000 people that work in this company. People are your best asset. You hear a lot of people say that, but not a lot of people practise it. He reports that Chromalloy has a low staff turnover, especially among its engineers, and it has many employees with 15 years company experience or more. This is one main reason for the firm s technological expertise today. To nurture this talent and build on the individuals motivation, he thinks it is important to allow employees to be creative, experiment with new ideas and also make mistakes, because the only way you are going to braze new areas and new technology is to make mistakes. Ideas to improve existing processes are continuously needed. One of the main challenges for Chromalloy is to reduce lead times for new technologies. We are absolutely not fast enough, states Lauzon. If a customer comes, gives me a part and says I need a repair, I should be able to do that in less than two weeks. No exceptions. One measure to address this issue is a lean team that has been formed this year; the company has never looked at lean initiatives before. The team is developing, for example, ways to reduce part travel distances inside factories. The CEO admits that, while the company has always maintained a strong focus on technological innovations over the past five decades, it has missed the opportunity to pay similar attention to organising the manufacturing side of the business in the most efficient ways. In some older facilities one can still see how the work processes developed from the early days in the late 1950s throughout the decades to the present day will go down in the history of Chromalloy as the year of lean, promises Lauzon. Working towards these various goals and ambitions would be challenging even in a prosperous economic times, let alone in the current economic climate. The airlines in the US and elsewhere have cut capacity; in other words, there are fewer aircraft in the skies and thus fewer aircraft in the hangars. As a consequence, MRO providers need to reduce their costs accordingly to stay profitable. Nevertheless, the Sequa CEO/Chromalloy president is determined to go ahead with his plans: When you are in a market like this, the one thing I do know is you have to be on the offensive; you cannot be on the defensive. You have to make sure your cost structure is where it needs to be, so you can compete and go after that incremental market share. Don t sit back and wait for anything to happen, go and make things happen. The way I describe it is go make luck. Laser hole drilling during the turbine blade production process at the company s Orangeburg facility. Aircraft Technology - Issue