RON MCKENNA, PRESIDENT, HAMILTON SUNDSTRAND

On the Record with
RON MCKENNA, PRESIDENT, HAMILTON SUNDSTRAND

Hamilton Sundstrand aims to be a power utility company-for aircraft, that is. President Ron McKenna sees many parallels between a city and an aircraft when it comes to generating and distributing electricity.

Instead of generating high power and running it to the cockpit and its circuit breakers, Hamilton Sundstrand has integrated a new "distributed" system that provides power as needed to galleys, heating units, lights, fans, and all other electrical equipment. On the Fairchild Dornier 728JET, for example, the new system will eliminate 1,000 components and nearly 5.5 miles of aircraft wire.

On the new PW6000 engine, Hamilton Sundstrand has supplied nearly half the accessories-the gearbox, fuel pumps, lubrication pumps, oil scavenger pumps, engine starters, FADEC and a variety of other components-and integrated them as a system on the gearbox, which has extensive internal plumbing.

"If you look at the rotating speeds of the components and begin to optimize them as a system you can reduce the number of shafts in the gearbox from, say nine to five or six, and eliminate all the external plumbing between them " McKenna said. "And all the components are still line-replaceable."

While aircraft designers draw flights of fancy on their computer screens, the less glamorous vendors of components are having visions of their own.

"We will become suppliers not of components, but of whole systems," Ron McKenna, president of Hamilton Sundstrand, told Show News. For the company that resulted from the merger a year ago of Hamilton Standard and Sundstrand Corp., those visions are already becoming reality.

The merger fortuitously coincided with the two companies' independent bids to supply components to Embraer for its new ERJ-170/190 family of 70-90 passenger regional jets. By merging their bids -- and their capabilities -- to supply several integrated systems, Hamilton Sundstrand won business that could be worth more than $1 billion over the life of the program.

The company's revenues this year will top $3 billion.

"Already we are seeing results in the marketplace from our merger, which has enabled us to become a systems supplier with a capability greater than the sum of the two companies," McKenna said.

The integrated systems designed and supplied to Embraer by Hamilton Sundstrand include the auxiliary power unit, air management and environmental control system, electric power generation and distribution system, and actuation systems. As if to illustrate its capabilities of systems integration, Hamilton Sundstrand will supply Embraer with a completely stuffed, bolt-on tailcone (subcontracted to BFGoodrich's Aerostructures Group) containing the APU, ducting and fire suppression systems.

McKenna contends the movement toward systems integration is being driven by the regional airliner manufacturers, who are more innovative than Boeing or Airbus in delegating design authority to suppliers as they strive to keep costs down.

Before the merger Hamilton had won a major competition to provide the Fairchild Dornier 728JET's highly integrated electric power and distribution system via a contract potentially worth $1 billion. "The regional market has been a real bonus to us," said McKenna. "We have as much dollar volume on a regional jet as on a large narrowbody airliner."

Hamilton Standard and Sundstrand have already learned a lot from each other in the short year of their merger, spurring McKenna to focus on three goals:

o To extend the group's expertise in providing extensively integrated power and environmental systems;

o To make Hamilton Sundstrand the leading systems integrator for engine accessories, aiming for a 30% reduction in weight and cost by providing the gearbox and its pumps and generators as a combined unit, as on the new PW6000 engine;

o To become a major global player in the maintenance, repair and overhaul market by combining its resources with those of parent United Technologies, former Sundstrand joint venture partners such as KLM Engineering & Maintenance, Singapore Airlines SIA Engineering, and suppliers including Rockwell Collins. "This is part of UTC's nose-to-tail maintenance strategy for airlines, but also goes outside it," McKenna explained.

Hamilton Sundstrand's integrated systems approach will undoubtedly drive the company's future acquisition strategy, McKenna allowed. Often the systems it designs will include components made by non-related suppliers. "So if you look at a pneumatic system for example, or all the power electrics, or the fuel system, or the engine accessories-as you look at those clusters as systems in themselves, and you think of what we manufacture in each of those areas, it doesn't take a genius to see what products we don't have." While joint ventures would make sense with some companies, McKenna's preference is to acquire those that bring some technology to the table.

By John Morris