Location: Irvine, CA
Segment: Commercial
Customer Focus: CRJ200 Platform
In the 1980’s Eaton was selected by Bombardier to provide the hydraulic engine-driven pump and AC electric motorpump for Bombardier’s new 50 passenger regional jet.
The new aircraft was well received by the civil aviation community and Bombardier delivered 1150 aircraft to various airlines around the globe.
As the aircraft fleet matured, the reliability for the engine-driven hydraulic pump started declining and soon fell below an acceptable level having significant operational and financial impact at the airlines. In addition to a poor perception of the product performance by customers, Eaton had lost most of the aftermarket business for this product to third party maintenance providers and PMA manufacturers. This business was lost due to an unacceptable level of customer service provided from Eaton with regard to price, part delivery performance, repair TAT and communications.
Eaton worked with the aircraft manufacturer for several years and collectively could not duplicate the type pump failures experienced on the aircraft, and therefore could not find a resolution for the pump reliability issue. To address this long standing product performance issue and negative customer perception, Eaton took action by acquiring the aircraft hydraulic system architecture. Eaton designed and built a hydraulic circuit to simulate the aircraft system and was able to duplicate the pump failure mode experienced on the aircraft. This allowed Eaton's engineering team to identify a product improvement that would improve pump reliability by tuning the pump to the aircraft system. Working with Atlantic Southeast Airlines (ASA), Eaton validated the improvement by conducting test with the pump installed in the actual aircraft systems. As the manufacturer did not have the resources to manage the approval of the upgrade in a timely manner, Eaton used the Designated Engineer Representative (DER) process to approve the upgrade through the FAA.
Eaton offered the pump upgrade to the CRJ airline community and has now captured five years maintenance agreements with two of the largest CRJ operators.
One year into the program, Eaton has upgraded 260 Vicker's brand PV3-044-48 model pumps with an average of eleven days turn-around time. Eaton now has two satisfied customers, recovered a significant amount of aftermarket business and is negotiating agreements with several other airlines to provide the upgrade for their CRJ pumps.
