When Precision Aviation Group (PAG) commits to providing a service to a customer, that commitment is substantial. With eight locations and more than 245,000-square-feet of sales and service facilities across the United States, Canada and Australia, PAG uses its 11 distinct business units to provide timely supply chain and maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) services to fixed- and rotary-wing customers around the world.
Continued expansion has been the hallmark of PAG’s recent past, with its rapid growth fueled by a combination of strategic acquisitions, the creation of new facilities in key locations, and the expansion of its existing facilities. These moves have not only brought it new customers, but, by increasing its global footprint, the company is now closer to many of its existing clients.
Today, PAG’s subsidiaries — which include Precision Heliparts, Precision Aviation Services, Precision Accessories and Instruments, Precision Heliparts Canada, Precision Accessories and Instruments Canada, PHP-Instruments and Accessories, Precision Aero Technology, Precision Heliparts — Australia, Precision Accessories and Instruments — Australia, and Precision Aviation Controls — offer MRO capabilities on over 21,000 products, including accessories, avionics, instruments, hydraulics, starter generators and wheels and brakes.
Over the years, PAG has established outstanding relationships with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and now proudly stands as either an authorized service center or authorized distributor for over 80 OEMs, including Parker, Honeywell, Garmin, Airbus Helicopters, Luminator, Rockwell Collins, Rapco, and Moog. It supplies operators flying everything from a Robinson R66 to an AgustaWestland AW139 and from a Beechcraft King Air 350 to a Boeing 747.
David Mast, PAG president and chief executive officer, said this diversity has helped PAG weather the current storm affecting much of the rotary-wing market, and points to the recent expansion of the company’s MRO capabilities at its newer facilities in Lafayette, Louisiana, (which serves the southeastern United States), and in Brisbane, Australia, as evidence of how the company is continuing to invest to better serve the market.
“We’ve made monumental growth strides by making investments to put facilities and infrastructure where our customers are,” said Mast. “If you look at the investment we’ve made in Lafayette and the investment we’ve made in Brisbane, they’re both in excess of $2 million — that’s inventory, facility enhancements and improvements.”
Mast added that this expansion of capabilities and inventory is one of the things that differentiates PAG from its competition — along with its trademarked Inventory Supported Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (ISMRO) model.
ISMRO merges repair station MRO functions with traditional parts distribution. So, if an operator has a critical component fail, and doesn’t have time to wait for the repair, PAG can immediately supply them with a repaired or overhauled component from its own inventory. It then repairs the operator’s component, and uses it to restock its shelf.
The key to making it work is having an inventory extensive enough to reliably meet operators’ needs — and PAG has a rotable parts inventory worth $32 million (cost, not retail value).
“We provide a vast array of products and services to get mission-critical operators back in the air,” said Ketan Desai, vice president of sales and marketing at PAG. “In addition to that, due to our global locations around the world, we have inventory strategically placed so we can deploy it the same day to a mission-critical operator, whether they’re flying in Asia, Africa, or up in Northern Canada.”
Recently, PAG has seen huge growth in its engine accessories, starter generators, and wheel and brake product lines from its customers — growth that Desai said results from the value PAG brings to its customers.
As the company moves forward, it continues to expand. PAG opened a new facility in Brazil in January and plans to establish two other facilities in 2016. While the exact locations are being kept secret for now, Mast revealed they will be in Southeast Asia and Europe.
More generally, Mast said PAG will continue its record of inventory and capability expansion to better support its customers. “When we bought PAI in 2004, we didn’t have a wheel and brake shop,” he noted. “As of today, we have five wheel and brake shops located worldwide. By the middle of 2016, we will have six. There are very few companies that do that. We also have electromechanical accessory and starter generator support at all of those five locations. We don’t just have capabilities in one location, we put those capabilities where our customers are.”
Desai said it’s this focus on providing an exceptional service experience that has kept customers coming back, decade after decade. “The customer’s experience with PAG, from the minute we pick up the phone, to the minute they get their package, that’s what’s different with PAG. We’re not just another parts provider.”
www.precisionaviationgroup.com
404-768-9090
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