About Mohamed Ali
Mohamed Ali, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology & Operations Officer at GE Aerospace, has been discussing the company's progress on engine durability and next-generation propulsion technology. During GE Aerospace's March 2024 Investor Day, Ali stated that the company had introduced fixes for parts limiting LEAP engine durability in hot and harsh environments, including the shroud, radial drive shaft, fuel nozzle cooling, and high-pressure turbine blade. He said the first production engine with the fuel nozzle cooling fix was at Airbus and that the first production set for the turbine blade fix was ready, with production engines expected to reach mature time on wing for LEAP 1A by the end of 2024 and LEAP 1B in 2025. Ali attributed his confidence to real testing that simulated actual failure modes and dust environments, describing the process as "turn on and turn off" of the problem.
Ali has also spoken about the CFM RISE program and open fan architecture, which he described as necessary to achieve more than 20% fuel burn improvement due to physical limitations of ducted engines. He noted that the company had tested a megawatt-class hybrid electric system at 45,000 feet with NASA and was collaborating with Boeing and Airbus on hybrid electric and hydrogen demonstrations. Ali emphasized the company's safety culture, stating that "bringing them home safely is the number one responsibility" and that the engineering team aims to "find safety issues and fix them before they find us." He also discussed the application of Flight Deck, GE Aerospace's lean operating model, to improve supplier output, noting that ten critical supplier sites more than doubled their output in the second quarter of 2024.
Source: AI-verified profile updated from Mohamed Ali's recent appearances.
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Transcript (13 segments)
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Reporter0:00
With a special guest this morning which made a lot of news. Phil.
Thank you, Andrew. Larry Culp, CEO of GE Aerospace. The IT outage that hit so many organizations.
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Larry Culp0:22
Phil, we had a lot of impact this morning. You see behind us, the team is fully engaged in the work of the day. We think we're working our way through it.
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Reporter0:32
With regard to the plant, there is news you are making this morning. A $1 billion investment in this facility, but other facilities.
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Larry Culp0:44
Let me formally welcome you to Wales. We have 1,300 colleagues here to prepare work on the CM-56 and wide body engines. We talk about how 70% of our business and services is the team that does work here that manifests itself in the 70% figure. They are using Flight Deck to drive progress here. This is the future home of the work on the engine for Boeing's 777 engine.
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Reporter1:25
That $1 billion is something you need. Let's be honest. You have a wave of customers who are saying we know we're going to need our engines serviced in the future. You just don't have enough capacity. Not just you, but the industry overall. You have to add capacity.
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Larry Culp1:43
Right. Phil, we will spend $5 billion in the next five years across the global footprint to lay in the capacity. The capacity we need with the aero body space and the wide body space and, frankly, the military. We are seeing an uptick in the engine platforms. We need the footprint and capacity to support those engines for decades to come.
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Reporter2:12
Let me ask you about Flight Deck. The key to Flight Deck is smarter and leaner manufacturing. How different is this plant here than when it was when you took over as CEO?
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Larry Culp2:23
I came here for the first time as we were coming out of COVID. When I was here most recently, I barely recognize the Wales facility. This team has done a phenomenal job implementing Flight Deck and putting the principles to work to enhance quality and safety and driving better efficiency and better use of all of the folks we have here to improve our delivery turnaround times for customers.
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Reporter2:55
You spend a lot of time at supplier plants working with them saying how can we help you be better, right?
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Larry Culp3:01
Exactly. Our challenge today is not demand. It really is supply. As we shared on our first report earnings recall, over three quarters of our challenges today are rooted in the supply base. We are not getting enough material in to do our work. We are taking Flight Deck to the supply base. We talked about 15 sites with suppliers that are critical. In the second quarter, we saw ten of those sites more than double their output to us. We see Flight Deck helping us with our suppliers going in and identifying and breaking those constraints.
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Reporter3:39
Quickly, we have the Farm Bureau Air Show this weekend. The record orders. You see the backlog orders. Where do you see the industry over the next year as it works through these backlog and supply chain challenges?
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Larry Culp3:57
We have the airlines flying at record levels and the air framers are looking to ramp production. We have a supply challenge, not a demand issue in any way, shape or form. We will work out of the current situation, but it will take a while because we're pursuing a moving target. That's a good thing. Flight Deck will give us the tool.
