Textron Aviation came to Europe with new CEO Ron Draper, who’s looking to ramp up the manufacturer of Cessna and Beechcraft airplanes’ service capabilities in the region and place greater emphasis on its legacy Cessna Citation line. Draper, who assumed the chief executive role from Scott Ernest in October, is a 20-year veteran of Textron Inc., including 15 years at Cessna and Textron Aviation. The former Army Black Hawk helicopter pilot and West Point graduate was most recently senior v-p of integrated supply chain at Textron Aviation.
His first order of business in Europe is an expansion of the parts warehouse in Dusseldorf, Germany, that will increase available parts numbers to nearly 35,000 items. “We have a pretty covered [service] footprint on the European continent, but we’re expanding our parts in Europe,” Draper told AIN. “We’ve heard our customers say they want even more availability and faster response times, so we’re doubling the size of our warehouse in Europe to put more parts on the continent, to maintain our class-leading service we feel we enjoy with our customers today.”
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