A Peek Inside the Lycoming Engine

A Peek Inside The Lycoming Factory

What happens to your engine when Lycoming overhauls it

By Greg Napert

April 1999

After decades of producing aircraft engines for everything from military war efforts to recreational aircraft and business aircraft — through industry good times and bad — the Lycoming aircraft engine factory is in the process of being renovated into a modern facility with a more streamlined production process.

The company has undergone many piecemeal changes in the past, but none has been more comprehensive and has brought the factory closer to a modern manufacturing facility than those being made today. The uneven, hand-poured floors, and generally drab gray overcast of this once heavy industrial facility, reminiscent of an era long gone, makes modernizing the facility challenging at best.

But AMT's interest in visiting the new Textron Lycoming facility was not to evaluate the real estate. Instead, we were more interested in taking a look at the significant changes that have taken place over the last decade or so — namely, a shift away from manufacturing, to that of an assembly plant.

As one who has visited in the past, the shift is noticeable upon entering the plant. Once ringing with the sound of machinery, milling and manufacturing equipment, it is now a relatively quiet environment that includes little more than teardown and assembly operations.

For those that may not be aware, the company now has outside vendors manufacturing close to 99 percent of all parts used in Textron Lycoming engines. There is some manufacturing of select parts at the Lycoming facility, but this is done on a very limited basis.

The evolution of the company over the years to outsourced parts was based on several factors — some that the marketing people are proud to speak of and others that they would rather not go into. Some of these include well-known union labor disputes, as well as tough times in the economy and changes in business philosophy.

According to Paul Lefevre, director of sales and marketing for Textron Lycoming, "There are currently no plans at this time to go back to manufacturing components at the factory. Right now, the only parts we manufacture in the plant are connecting rods, however, this will probably change in the future."

For those that think this change in philosophy over the years may not bode well for engine manufacturing quality, Lefevre settles those fears with an interesting statement — "I have never seen better, more precise crankcases and better manufacturing quality on our parts since we started outsourcing. That's no cut to the people that used to be involved manufacturing these parts at our plants, but it's simply because we were using outdated manufacturing equipment. While manufacturing was taking place in our facility, we were still moving parts from station to station to machine them. Today, our vendors are using sophisticated, computer-controlled, 5-axis milling machines that keep the components in one place and perform all of the machining operations with precision that we never had before."

Lefevre explains that outsourcing has afforded the company the ability to look into continuous product improvement as well. This is apparent in the new product introductions and technological offerings suddenly available, which have been noticeably absent over the last 20-plus years. As well, customer service and support are being evaluated and scrutinized in hopes of providing improvements to customers.

Lefevre says, "There are many improvements yet to be made. It's difficult sometimes to explain why certain things were done the way they were at the factory, but you've got to remember that the industry has been through some lean times."