Name of Customer Representative: Raul Conrads (Chilean Air Force aka FACH) Phone Number: +56 (9)

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1 Name of Program: Esterline CMC Cockpit 9000 Program Name of Program Leader: Sergio Coletta Phone Number: Cell # (514) Sergio.coletta@cmcelectronics.ca Postage Address: 600 Dr-Frederik Philips Boulevard, Montreal, Quebec, Canada H4M 2S9 Name of Customer Representative: Raul Conrads (Chilean Air Force aka FACH) Phone Number: +56 (9) rauljorquera@fach.cl Bio for program leader: Sergio Coletta is General Manager, New Business & Alliances, for Esterline CMC Electronics, a position he has held since In this capacity, Coletta is responsible for the growth of the operation from a Marketing, Business Development and Sales perspective as well as through alliances with strategic partners. Previously, Coletta was Commercial Director for a period of 10 years. During his 32-year career with the company, he has held various positions of ever increasing responsibility in the areas of Contracts Management, Business Development and Marketing. Relationship equity is the lifeblood of Esterline s marketing and sales and business development activities. Sergio Coletta is a master builder of relationship equity. His exceptional acumen in establishing and nurturing relationships with customers, partners and colleagues is the foundation for the company s success in many key markets. He is a proven leader who has opened major new markets in the Middle East, South America and Europe. Coletta has achieved the status of a living legend at Esterline in recognition of his outstanding success and leadership in winning international C-130 cockpit retrofit programs. In October 2008, Coletta achieved the largest single booking in company history. The contract involved the selection of Esterline s CMC Cockpit 9000 modernization solution by the Royal Saudi Air Force for the upgrade of twenty C-130 aircraft. This contract has launched what is expected to grow into a multi-million dollar business. Coletta s incomparable skills in forging and expanding customer relationships are built on a topflight track record of understanding and knowing the customer, continuous communications, shrewd negotiating skills and an unwavering commitment to customer satisfaction. Customers trust and respect him and his entire team. His vision, determination and extensive knowledge of cultures, people and customs are an important asset to Esterline. A world-class business developer, Coletta inspires his team to excel and build a solid reputation with customers by listening to and meeting customers needs AVIATION WEEK PROGRAM EXCELLENCE INITIATIVE 1

2 Phase I Program Narrative - 1 Esterline CMC Cockpit 9000 Avionics Upgrade for Legacy C-130 Aviation Week Program Excellence Submission: System R&D/SDD Category Introduction The CMC Cockpit 9000 is a complete fully digital glass cockpit avionics replacement solution for legacy C-130 aircraft that brings such aircraft into full compliance to CNS/ATM civil airspace operations worldwide, enhances mission effectiveness and addresses critical avionics obsolescence issues. The program implementing the CMC Cockpit 9000 has set a new standard in terms of schedule achievement in this field, with the execution of the prototype phase, flight test phase and implementation on 17 customer aircraft returned to service, all within three years. Pushing the Limits on Program Execution Over the last three years, the CMC Cockpit 9000 has progressed from a paper concept to a fielded and proven solution. This is even more impressive considering that the scope of work during that period has included dual certification of the solution (i.e. both civil and military) on seven different C-130E/H variants and has included the fielding of a new digital autopilot and the co-development with CAE of a Class D full-motion simulator (commissioned in March 2010). Since the first modified C-130 aircraft was returned to service in July 2010, it has been joined by sixteen other completions. This modernized fleet has performed flawlessly in a wide range of environments from the peak-of-summer Saudi Arabian desert to missions in frigid Antarctica. Moving so quickly and smoothly in 2009 and 2010 through the prototype and flight test phases and into the initial one aircraft upgrade per month production delivery rate achieved in 2011 has required a number of novel approaches. This includes a lean, but elite management and engineering team, with all the pre-requisite experience for the management of such a program. Just as importantly, it has included intense focus at the outset of the program on the selection of partners having best-in-class offerings coupled with a focus on program management agility that was compatible with Esterline's overall lean program approach. Vital Success Factors/ Teachable Lessons Setting highly ambitious schedule and performance goals is one thing, but up-front planning was key in the success of meeting the goals of the CMC Cockpit 9000 program. Developing an underlying cockpit avionics architecture that is inherently and easily configurable to the many existing variants or flavors of C-130 was a vital goal, since there was no room for reactive redesign cycles. While the use of a System Integration Lab (SIL) for such projects is normal practice, Esterline went the extra mile in terms of an advanced flyable dynamic SIL to optimize our ability to transition quickly from SIL to first test flight and then to production. This was augmented by early availability of dedicated Cockpit Procedures Trainers (CPT) with the 2012 AVIATION WEEK PROGRAM EXCELLENCE INITIATIVE 2

3 Phase I Program Narrative - 2 complete cockpit man-machine interface to allow pilot operation and human factors issues to be identified and addressed in collaboration with our customers at the earliest stages of the project. Configurable and Scalable Avionics Architecture Being an analog airplane, the traditional C-130 avionics retrofit projects of the past have been encumbered by large numbers of analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog converters that are required to make newer digital avionics units interoperate with legacy analog parts. These converters are typically custom-designed for each specific operator, adding long development lead times, not to mention costs and wiring complexity. They also detract from the long-term reliability and maintainability gains that are provided by modern digital equipment, since these converters add new sources of unreliability and typically do not include built-in test capability and fault logging. For all these reasons, Esterline has taken a very different approach with the CMC Cockpit 9000 architecture to use an all-digital suite with no custom converters. It has allowed this solution to be easily adaptable to the myriad of legacy C-130 variants one encounters throughout the world fleet. By reducing the LRU count to the maximum extent possible, while still meeting all requirements, Esterline has been able to reduce the complexity of the A kit design, ensure a higher overall aircraft MTBF and provide more effective fault isolation and troubleshooting. Of the thirty or more subsystems that comprise a full CMC Cockpit 9000 suite, it is the Flight Management System/Mission Computer (FMS) that is the heart of any modern cockpit. In fact the CMC Cockpit 9000 takes its name from the company s own "CMA-9000" FMS that provides the heart of this avionics upgrade solution. Due to the manner in which the FMS must interface to almost all other major cockpit subsystems, the configurability of this key equipment item is a vital element in minimizing program lead times. And the fact that the CMA-9000 is an Esterline product ensured that this vital element is within the total control of the CMC Cockpit 9000 program team. Preserving and Enhancing the Mission The most successful cockpit upgrades for legacy C-130 fleets are those that retain all existing mission capability of the aircraft and at the same time enhance this mission capability. This has been one of the greatest strengths of the CMC Cockpit 9000, as witnessed by the delighted feedback from its initial operators. Achieving this result goes to the heart of the necessary upfront work in the specification and selection of avionics components. It involves finding the right balance between Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS), Military-off-the-shelf (MOTS) and dual-use equipment AVIATION WEEK PROGRAM EXCELLENCE INITIATIVE 3

4 Phase I Program Narrative - 3 While COTS equipment is attractive from a cost containment perspective, the secret to preserving mission capability with commercially specified equipment is to carefully select individual products which through their inherent quality exceed minimum commercial specifications. For example, the civil-specified GPS used in the CMC Cockpit 9000 has an extremely high proven MTBF in harsh environments and has also been evaluated against military environmental specifications to the extent it is now standard factory equipment on the C-130J. The use of dual-use equipment is one of the keys to enhancing the mission as part of the CMC Cockpit 9000 upgrade. For example, the CMA-9000 FMS mentioned earlier embeds a wealth of advanced FMS tactical features, including SAR patterns, CARP/HARP, rendezvous and orbit capability, as well as tanker and moving waypoint functions. The replacement digital autopilot brings additional benefits that are not available in the legacy autopilot in terms of fully integrated architecture, tactile control wheel steering mode, digital display indications on the multi-function displays, fault management, high MTBF, and smart servos. Accelerated Transition into Production As scope changes are nearly always the biggest threat to ambitious schedules in such complex programs, the company decided to base the CMC Cockpit 9000 almost exclusively on proven elements requiring minimal changes. The schedule was optimized by early customer-level buyin on system capabilities and human factors considerations. This buy-in was achieved by the ability to evaluate the solution first on the SIL and CPTs mentioned above then soon afterwards on the Full-motion Flight Simulator located at CAE s facility in Tampa, Florida. This strategy proved highly effective in practice, with the scope of changes that were identified as a result of this early evaluation thereby limited to those that were genuine needs. The early identification provided the necessary execution time without risk of slippage of the production phase transition. As a result of the measures described above, Esterline was able to achieve its objective of completely avoiding an aircraft-level prototype phase. The first aircraft with the CMC Cockpit 9000 retrofit in 2009/10 emerged from its ground verification then extensive flight testing phase with virtually no changes other than pre-planned software revisions. In this way, the CMC Cockpit 9000 solution was able to transition from SIL to aircraft production in one step. This is more than anything the key to success on the entire Program, and it was all made possible by the early planning and tools described earlier AVIATION WEEK PROGRAM EXCELLENCE INITIATIVE 4

5 Phase I Program Narrative - 4 Lean Management Development and broad deployment of the comprehensive CMC Cockpit 9000 avionics upgrade solution for the legacy C-130 sector in such a short time window would not have been possible without a lean and agile program management structure. The program team integrated all required disciplines from across the company in a matrix fashion under one strong program leader. These disciplines included a core team of systems engineers, subcontract management specialists, field support engineers, quality engineers, program planners and customer relationship managers. Esterline empowered the Program team with the decision-making power and tools to fully manage the project with minimal head-office oversight except when their support is needed to address some unexpected issues. A meaningful bundle of metrics established at the onset of the program and presented monthly to the company senior leadership team was crafted in a manner that a 30-minute monthly briefing provides an accurate snapshot of program status and any trends requiring attention. This same empowerment philosophy was extended, wherever feasible, to the company's key partners on the program, for example partners providing specialized expertise such as kit design and manufacture and partners overseeing and conducting the hands-on aircraft installation at the customers' sites. Summary Having 17 CMC Cockpit 9000 complete avionics upgrades fielded on legacy C-130s less than two years after delivery of the first one in July 2010 is a testament not only to the skills and experience of the assigned program team, but also to the empowerment of this team by Esterline to be able to execute this challenging task in an optimally agile manner. Being able to build up as planned to the current one aircraft per month deployment rate (and beyond) and evershrinking aircraft downtime (now under four months for this extensive modification) is also evidence of the composition and performance of Esterline s equipment and installation partners AVIATION WEEK PROGRAM EXCELLENCE INITIATIVE 5