3. Discuss the various services offered by RR to differentiate from competitors?

Which of
these was/were most successful and why?

The various differentiating services offered by Rolls Royce are as follows:

1. Maintenance Contract based on the concept of “Power by the Hour”:
Under this service, the customer had to pay Rolls Royce a maintenance fee per
aircraft flight hour which means that the time whenever the engines were running
would only have to be paid in the form of maintenance fee, as the customer earned
returns only during the flight period. In return, Rolls-Royce offered to maintain
the engines and replace them if they broke down.
The differentiating aspect of the service was providing engines on lease and also
undertaking repair of accessory units, in case, emergency unscheduled repairs
occur.
The service was also most successful for the company because it was accepted
across all its business segments of civil aerospace, defense aviation, marine
propulsion and energy. Most importantly in the civil aerospace segment, it
provided several benefits like predictable maintenance costs, reduced capital
investment, and improved residual value of the aircraft. Operators were assured of
an accurate cost projection and avoiding the costs associated with unscheduled
maintenance actions.
These maintenance contracts were for a period of 12 years on an average.
Typically, they varied between eight years for Corporate Care customers and 20
years for some Total Care customers. These contracts, thus, represented a
relatively secure revenue stream for the company for several years into the future
making it a successful service strategy.

2. Logistics and Engineering Support:

It included support in terms of transportation of engines from the airline
operator’s hangar to the engine overhaul base and back which used to help the
airline operators save a lot of logistics cost to them

3. Engine Health Management (EHM) Service:

The main aspects of the Engine Health Management (EHM) service were to
monitor engine performance, detect anomalies, and provide solutions to all
engine-related problems. The EHM service was made available to customers
around the clock.
The differentiating aspect of this service which also made it one of the most
successful services by the company was the integration ability of it across several
other services offered by the company.
The service was provided to customers through the websites
enginedatacenter.com and aeromanager.com. The enginedatacenter.com was used
to provide the engine management recommendations to the airline operators based
on the real time data sent from aircraft in flight that the company was able to
collect with the help of live satellite feeds that was further analyzed with an
 innovative IT system called ‘Service Data Manager’ along with the support of
operations help desk in Derby, England which formed a large part of its global
overhaul network and service centers. The center used to be operational 24 hours
a day, 7 days a week. It monitored the health of 3,000 aero engines for 45 airline
customers around the world.
It picked up any variations from the specified operating parameters in the engines'
performance, to detect any serious problems. The team of technicians at the center
also referenced the history of the engines, including the problems they had had in
the past, to find out the reasons for any variations in performance.

Aeromanager.com was the portal that Rolls-Royce created for aerospace

customers. Through this portal, the company provided customers with a number
of services that included an online facility to order spare parts and the ability to
view the status of engines that had been sent for repair and overhaul. In addition,
the portal provided information about lease engine availability, and the work
scope of the engines sent for repair, and also enabled customers to view applicable
engine upgrades.

Since the company had access to the operational data of the aero engines, it
allowed the company to understand work scope beforehand, which enabled it to
repair the engine quickly. Moreover, the company was able to plan
repairs/removal in advance and allocate technical resources more efficiently. Rolls
Royce also achieved significant savings in maintenance costs (by almost
US$500,000 per engine), as an unplanned engine repair/ removal increased
logistics and other costs.

4. On-Wing Care Service:

It acts as an intermediary service between flight line maintenance and regular
maintenance check-ups, for its civil aerospace customers.
The On-Wing Care service provided a range of maintenance support for its
customers in emergency situations and helped minimize time-consuming overhaul
shop visits. It provided response and problem resolution services to operators who
faced unexpected engine problems and other maintenance issues.

This service was also among one of the most successful services for Rolls Royce
because it helped the company achieve its objective of prolonging the operating
lifespan of its aircraft engines by employing Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE)
methods for engine parts since the replacement of an engine involved significant
costs to an airline company and also consumed a lot of time.