Rafale business wins go hand in hand with customer support
2021 was a record-breaking year for the Rafale! Export customers ordered 278 of the latest Dassault multirole fighter, which incorporates products from 12 different Safran companies.
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However, for Safran this hefty order backlog means having to meet a two-pronged challenge: not only produce the Rafale’s M88 engine, but also provide support services for all these customers. We take a closer look at these international business wins with three top execs from Safran Aircraft Engines’ Military Engine Division: Jean-Michel Missirian, Vice President for Sales, Jean-François Sauer, Vice President for Support, and Cyril Volte, M88 program chief.
fter initial export successes in Egypt, Qatar and India, 2021 marked a high point in the career of the Rafale, one of the stars in the French aerospace and defense industry. Kicking off the year, Greece signed a contract for 18 Rafales, becoming the first export customer in Europe, then announced its intention of buying six more. Egypt followed in May, acquiring 30 more Rafales to reinforce its air force, and Croatia announced an order for 12 Rafales to modernize its armed forces. The year closed on a high note with an order from the United Arab Emirates for 80 Rafales on December 3, an all-time record for Dassault!
These excellent results reflect the Rafale’s top-flight capabilities of course, but they will also ensure workload for many years to come for both Dassault and all the companies that contribute to the program.
An entire ecosystem supports Rafale production
An entire industrial ecosystem will benefit from these latest Rafale export successes. The Rafale International consortium (Dassault, Safran Aircraft Engines and Thales), which books Rafale orders, distributes work among nearly 500 subcontractors, accounting for some 7,000 direct jobs in France. At Safran, 12 different companies contribute to the program, as suppliers of the engines, landing gear, electronics and other aircraft systems, cabin lighting and the ejection seat.
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Purchase and support contracts
Once the order has been placed and the engines delivered, the focus shifts to product support. Each M88 customer has one or more technical representatives on-site, along with a logistics rep. They’re tasked with identifying customer needs, managing their spare parts stocks, and also monitoring the fleet to define recommendations for engine use.
These local reps are part of a dedicated customer team, acting as liaison between the customer and all support staff, while overseeing contract execution. The aim is to enhance Safran’s customer support operations by offering only “by the hour” type service contracts with a focus on dispatch reliability, taking effect as soon as the engine is removed for servicing.
“By optimizing engine usage and more efficiently managing maintenance operations after engine removal, we can organize our maintenance workload over time and thus improve the dispatch reliability of our customers’ equipment,” explains Jean-François Sauer, Vice President for Support at the Military Engine Division. “For instance, we can fine tune engine removals and returns to repair shops, while also planning ahead for the production of spare parts. By improving our industrial performance, this approach minimizes the time engines are grounded and improves customer satisfaction by encouraging a relationship for the long haul.”
Maintainability was designed into the M88: each of its 21 constituent modules can be removed and reassembled on the flight line, without having to be rechecked on a test stand, thus saving time. Furthermore, the M88 features the quickest fighter engine removal/reassembly time on the market, in less than an hour as demonstrated by French air force personnel.
M88 production ramp-up
“The latest Rafale contracts are the result of sustained sales efforts,” notes M88 program chief Cyril Volte. “We had anticipated this possibility by drawing up a schedule for the associated production requirements, which is regularly updated as we ink new contracts. At the same time, we strictly follow a demand review process, a key to our future success. To deal with the upcoming flurry of deliveries, we decided to launch some production ahead of schedule. That ensures we can deliver engines to Dassault on time and it also allows us to efficiently expand our production facilities. The other success factor is quality management, which allows us to deliver products on time and cost-effectively.
Over and above production, we’re also ramping up training to ensure customer satisfaction. For instance, an ultra-modern training center was opened in 2019 on the Istres air force base to train our customers’ maintenance teams. “Customers send a group of technicians to take an initial five-to-six-month training course at Istres,” says Cyril Volte. “They then move to a second learning phase, either at Istres or in the customer’s own country.”
An engine with a bright future
The M88 engine program won’t stop once the orders from 2021 are delivered: on February 10, 2022, Indonesia announced the immediate purchase of six Rafales, with 36 more to come. Sales campaigns are already underway in various countries, and ongoing engine upgrades mean that the M88-powered Rafale has a very bright future ahead.
Facts & Figures
- 7
operators worldwide
- 80
Rafales purchased by the UAE on December 3, 2021, an all-time record
- 430
aircraft in service or on order
- 152
Rafales in service with the French air force by 2025
- 1 hour:
the time needed to remove an M88 and reinstall it
M88 sales
In the words of Jean-Michel Missirian, the Vice President for Sales at the Military Engine Division, “You don’t sell an M88 like a commercial airplane engine. Fighter orders are heavily dependent on geopolitics and fall within the scope of diplomatic relations. For international bidding wars like these, Rafale International and French authorities (MinArm, DGA, MAE) team up to offer customers the best possible agreements covering all aspects. It’s not enough to have the best product at the best price; you also need the best intergovernmental agreement. This is a win-win situation for government and industry, because export sales help maintain the industrial and technological base needed to ensure national independence.”