Airbus confirms the company is in the midst of a campaign to slash supply chain costs on the A320 programme that one supplier compares to Boeing’s “partnership for success” (PFS) effort.
The single-aisle cost optimisation programme-plus (SCOPE+) effort began 12-18 months ago as Airbus announced escalating production rates on the A320 family, creating opportunities to trade cost concessions from suppliers in return for access to larger volumes.
A year earlier, Boeing had launched its own internal cost reduction programme, putting some non-cooperative suppliers on a “no-fly” list and negotiating pricing concessions with the rest. Boeing set an overall cost reduction target of 15% from PFS.
Airbus confirms the existence of SCOPE+ but declines to release details or cost reduction goals. It does, however, differ from Boeing’s PFS in being limited to single aircraft family with the A320, rather than a broader effort spanning all Airbus commercial programmes.
Sanjay Kapoor, senior vice-president and chief financial officer of Spirit AeroSystems, discussed his own company’s association with the SCOPE+ programme during a presentation to investors at a conference hosted by Merrill Lynch on 17 September.
“I think this is public: Airbus has a programme called SCOPE+, like partnership for success,” Kapoor said. “SCOPE+ is Airbus’ s initiative to find ways to find ways to reduce cost as they increase their rates.”
The programme has offered opportunities for Spirit AeroSystems to bid for new work packages from Airbus.
“As part of that they are exploring dual-sourcing of certain components,” Kapoor says. “There are some bids that they’ve asked us for.”
The amount of the work involved is small, he adds. “They are not needle-moving kinds of packages at this stage,” Kapoor says. “But we are on a journey.”
Source: Cirium Dashboard
