From Beginnings to Breakthroughs: Celebrating 25 Years of Engineering Excellence at GE Aerospace’s Bangalore Centre

Since its founding as the John F. Welch Technology Centre (JFWTC) in 2000, when GE Aerospace assembled some of South Asia's most prodigious and diverse engineering talents at a new hub in India, the research and engineering site at Bangalore has become a global aviation leader and an innovation powerhouse on its own. Not only have its leaders contributed to more than 1,000 technology patents, building innovations toward the future of flight, but they've played a direct role in the dramatic expansion of the industry throughout Asia and the Middle East. On the occasion of the JFWTC's 25th anniversary, three distinguished global leaders whose career journeys began at the center talk about its unique nexus of research, technology, and visionary thinking, and how it sets the tempo for the aviation industry in India and beyond.

"Like Letting a Kid into a Candy Store"

Although he's now GE Aerospace's vice president of data sciences and analytics, Dinakar Deshmukh jokes that, when he first applied to JFWTC in 1999, "I submitted a handwritten paper résumé." While most of his engineering classmates pursued careers in IT, Deshmukh was determined to apply the core fundamentals of engineering. When GE announced its new mechanical design center in Bangalore, he was one of 70 or so new hires who were quickly amazed by the quality of their colleagues and the range of their opportunities.

"The number of top-of-the-class people learning across multiple disciplines was, at the time, just unheard of," he says. And his initial focus - advanced mechanical design - provided a dynamic base for exploration. "It's about bringing mechanical engineering concepts to produce increasingly robust individual components," Deshmukh says. "And the sky was the limit. For me, it was like letting a kid into a candy store."

For Deshmukh and his colleagues, the JFWTC offered a rare opportunity to learn while delivering. "I was mentored by world-class mechanical designers from Cincinnati, like Chris Glynn, who was a walking encyclopedia of mechanical engineering," Deshmukh says. "They helped us understand the nuances of jet engine design."

Assigned to an engine code-named "GNX" - now the GEnx - he worked on its high-pressure turbine component, then moved into clearances between its rotating and static parts. This work, in turn, grounded him in the inner workings of the powerplant - including fan clearances, compressor clearances, and turbine clearances - as he worked from the front to the back of the entire engine. "So with the combination of my peers, the learning opportunities, and the work itself, we used to come every weekend just to have fun," he says. "For me, it was never just a workplace."

After 14 formative years at the center, Deshmukh moved to the U.S. in 2015 to lead a global data sciences team from GE Aerospace's headquarters in Cincinnati, which is now the company's biggest concentration of AI talent. (Indeed, it was Deshmukh and his team that launched the company's first proprietary internal chat app, AI Wingmate, last year.) He recognizes that this is a far cry from his early days at the JFWTC, where employees had to use computers in shifts, but Deshmukh considers his evolution from engineer to data scientist a natural one.

"AI is changing how everybody works across the industries and we're certainly applying it to all facets of a jet engine," he says. "How we design our new engines, how we protect our flying fleet, how we improve our manufacturing and help our repair shops. It's AI, but used by engineers."

Twenty-five years after starting at the JFWTC, Dinakar Deshmukh continues to push innovation at GE Aerospace as vice president of data sciences and analytics.

An Engineer's Treasure Chest

Flexibility is an engineer's core attribute, but the interdisciplinary nature of the JFWTC has enabled some of its early hires, like Vidya Venkataramani, to become particularly polymathic leaders. Over time, she rose to become both head of the Engineering Sciences Organization in Bangalore - whose aero, mechanical, and thermal departments design products for the future of flight - and executive section manager for Advanced Design Tools, whose teams in five countries build the software used for design and analysis, creating the digital tools the engineering team uses on the CFM Revolutionary Innovation for Sustainable Engines (RISE) program* and other next-generation programs. "And by 'future of flight,' I mean that 80% or our work is on engines that don't exist yet," says Venkataramani. All of which reflects her initial experience at the center.

With advanced chemical engineering degrees in both India and the U.S., she came to the JFWTC in 2009, seeking real-world applications for analytic skills she'd honed in academia, discovering that aerospace had "just crazy-good problems to work on," she says. "None was ever boring, each one was really challenging, each one taught me something."

Vidya Venkataramani took her education in advanced chemical engineering from the theoretical to the applicable at the JFWTC. "In 25 years, we've evolved our understanding of the engine as well as our ability to deliver outcomes, come up with strategies, and drive decision-making for the business as a whole," she says.

It was working on the Passport program in 2014 that "really opened my eyes to the complexity of a jet engine," she recalls. "Not only combustion, but a thousand other things that need to happen in an engine to fly a plane from point A to point B." During this time, she found a deeper appreciation for both her colleagues and the larger ethos of GE Aerospace. "Whichever site you go to, the culture has a clear focus on problem-solving and building technical expertise," she says. "You have complex problems and excellent colleagues to help teach you, which is like an engineer's treasure chest."

Today, Venkataramani sees parallel growth between her own career and the center that nurtured it. "If it had stayed exactly where it was when I first joined, I might have gotten bored by now," she says. "But in 25 years, we've evolved our understanding of the engine as well as our ability to deliver outcomes, come up with strategies, and drive decision-making for the business as a whole, earning greater credibility to get more work scope and responsibilities."

Problem-Solving in the Field

The JFWTC began building much of this credibility in earnest about a dozen years after its founding, when leaders like Vaira Saravanan, who'd attended the center's inaugural meeting with then-CEO Jack Welch, moved from modeling jet engine simulations on a computer screen to tackling on-the-ground problems in aviation during its dramatic regional expansion. Initially, Saravanan and his JFWTC colleagues were tasked with taking the massive skill sets of the veterans who'd trained them and translating all of that knowledge into computer-based design and manufacturing - or as he put it, "building specific competencies in Bangalore that would support the design team in Cincinnati and together deliver a product."

But the world outside the center was changing: New global airlines had come into existence; a leading customer operating its fleet with CF6 and GE90 engines placed a big order for GEnx engines; and the aviation industry was connecting the entire Asia-Pacific (APAC) region to the rest of the world. "Because the languages and cultures are different, companies new to this technology needed support," Saravanan says. "So the company wanted a presence in this part of the world to support the customer."

Vaira Saravanan, the South Asia region's first head of Services Engineering, points out that one of the strengths of the JFWTC has been its embrace of "multidisciplinary and cross-functional teamwork" to tackle on-the-ground problems for customers.

In 2013, when GE Aerospace opened maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) shops, as well as field support operations, for customers in South Asia, Saravanan became the region's first head of Services Engineering. Before long, his team got some invaluable exposure to field operations that no amount of computer modeling could replace. He shares one example of genba - a lean concept that involves analyzing "the place where the work is done" - that illustrates their expertise in action. A customer was having trouble washing its new GEnx engines; the cleaning solution was flushing straight out of the exhaust without cleaning much of anything. In the span of two visits, a GE Aerospace engineer discerned that the crew had been setting the device at 80 pounds per square inch rather than the recommended 20 psi.

Saravanan recalls a chain reaction that followed this simple post-genba correction. "The pressure gets adjusted, the wash cleans the turbine, the exhaust-gas temperature margin rises, the engine is on wing longer with less fuel consumption, the airline is happy, GE Aerospace is happy," he says. "You would not believe how many emails flowed between the customer and GE Aerospace on that first day. And at the center we were like, 'OK, what's next?'"

Back then, the JFWTC's product support engineering team of just 20 people served customers in India, the Middle East, and China. Today this team numbers in the hundreds. "Repair engineers, product support engineers, analytic engineers, design engineers, analysis engineers, life management engineers," Saravanan says, all of whom were servicing a variety of GE Aerospace engines, including the G90, GP7200, GEnx, CFM LEAP,* and GE9X. He says it all stems from their interdisciplinary foundation at the center.

"Attaining fleet stability is multidisciplinary and cross-functional teamwork," he explains. "They all come together to make the product flight-worthy, to help us inspect and monitor its condition, and to predict, forecast, and prepare us for any opportunities to make our customers' operations even smoother."

Innovation Through Mentorship, Collaboration, and Growth

But even as GE Aerospace's technology hub at Bangalore has become a global center of innovation, Vidya Venkataramani feels that its older and newer members share certain fundamentals. "In the end, we're still problem solvers: We pay attention to detail, we do the work," she says. "The engineers of today ask questions; they don't just follow the template and do the job, they challenge the status quo. When I speak to longtime veterans here who've seen more cycles of next-generation engineers come in, they give me even more confidence in the future. We just need to continue to invest in training them, growing them, and then also allowing them to fail."

Even the most senior members of GE Aerospace in India cherish the opportunities that the JFWTC provided them early on. "For the past 25 years, the John F. Welch Technology Centre has been a sanctuary of innovation, collaboration, and growth," says Alok Nanda, GE Aerospace's chief technology officer in India.

"The center has fostered countless 'guru-shishya' relationships, a tradition where wisdom and teachings are passed from mentor to mentee, creating a foundation for growth and excellence," he adds, referring to the ancient teacher-disciple relationship in Indian tradition. "We stand tall because we stand on the shoulders of these incredible giants."

Still, Nanda and his colleagues remain firmly rooted to the ground. While Venkataramani oversees a large number of people across the two organizations she manages, she shares an innate sense of connection with all of them. "That's another part of JFWTC's legacy," she explains. "I can relate to every stage of the professional journey that they're on." And for everyone working at the center, it's a journey that keeps moving forward, aiming to create a brighter future through the spirit of innovation.

*CFM International, a 50-50 joint company between GE Aerospace and Safran Aircraft Engines, produces CFM LEAP engines and manages the CFM RISE program.