Boeing [BA]’s Global Services & Support (GSS) segment plans to expand its efforts worldwide, and part of that is looking at international opportunities, according to the unit’s top executive.
“As we continue to grow the business and Jim Albaugh has mentioned this as well at the Integrated Defense Systems level that he sees the international marketplace as being one where we expect to continue to expand,” Dennis Muilenburg, president, Global Services & Support, part of Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, said at a roundtable Oct.1.
GSS has three primary operations, a joint AH-64 Apache helicopter training effort in the United Kingdom with Finmeccanica’s AgustaWestland, an aircraft company in Saudi Arabia, which provides support and logistics capabilities, and runs a major portion of Boeing defense activities in Australia.
“Those are three very important international customers for us where we see continued opportunities to grow and serve those customers,” he said.
GSS looks at other opportunities, he said, certainly in the Middle East and India, where Boeing is quite active. Opportunities to work with India could include the upcoming fighter competition. GSS would also like to expand its work with customers in the United Kingdom and Europe.
A good example of GSS work is with the U.K. CH-47 Chinook helicopter through-life support program, a government industry partnership. “We’re achieving readiness levels and affordability levels that are well beyond anything achieved in the past,” Muilenburg said. “I think those new kind of business models, I think, are really starting to pay off.”
While the U.K. Apache training activity is a many multi yearlong effort, Muilenburg says, “What we really see is business models really being tailored for different customers.” That model works well for the U.K. customer, “providing stability of operations, it allows us to make the right investments with a long-term view and the pay off is readiness to the customer, and the kind of training rates we’ve been able to achieve with the U.K. customer have been very, very good.”
In the United States different models are beginning to evolve, especially in performance-based logistics area, such as Boeing’s work with the C-17, the F/A-18, and some of the support work on Chinook and Apache.
“That performance-based logistics model I think is really starting to gain some momentum as well, and the bottom line of that is again, we see higher readiness levels, higher availability levels for whatever the performance metric that the customer wants to emphasize, we see that performance metric improving,” Muilenburg said. “And at the same time because of the performance-based nature of the contract, we’re able to reduce costs over time.”
The customer starts to get a double-edge benefit, in terms of increased readiness and availability and reduced cost, he said. For Boeing, it’s a good business model as well because it allows the company to do long-term planning and the right kind of investment in resources. “I see that as a real win-win for our government customers and for business.”
But the business models are different in each country. “I think it’s important that we’re open to being flexible and tuning the business model to the customer in their unique environment.”