Employees down tools after restructuring plans are presented to European Works Council

Airbus employees have once again protested after chief executive Louis Gallois set out radical plans that include giving management a tighter rein over manufacturing centres of excellence and stripping operational responsibilities from national heads. Employees at Laupheim, Nordenham and Varel in Germany downed tools on 6 June.

"We do not expect any impact on production, as we have possibilities to recover," says Airbus.

Gallois presented plans to its European Works Council for the "new, simplified and streamlined" organisation due to be implemented in early September. Airbus says the changes will help it implement the Power8 restructuring plan, under which it aims to deliver EBIT contributions of €2.1 billion ($2.8 billion) from 2010 and an extra €5 billion of cumulative cashflow from 2007 to 2010.

Airbus is putting in place trans­national centres of excellence to deal with industrial operations, programmes and procurement that will be organised around complete elements of aircraft (see box) and support the "extended enterprise" - Airbus's network of key partners and suppliers.

Procurement will be organised transnationally around commodities, allowing Airbus to cut the number of tier 1 suppliers it deals with and "better manage and control" the supply chain.

As head of the programmes division, which is taking on a greater degree of manufacturing responsibility, Tom Williams will be the global point of contact with customers for all non-commercial aspects, says Airbus. He will be in charge of final assembly lines, cabin installation and definition and the reinforced overall programme management processes.

The programmes division "is to get firm commitments from the centres of excellence about their deliverables, with the authority to intervene, as needed."

Finance and human resources will also be run on a transnational basis, and although Airbus will maintain national representatives to deal with social relations and other national issues, they will lose their operational role.

The company is reshuffling its management team as part of the changes that Gallois says will "generate the dynamism, and the efficiency and productivity gains" needed.

Patrick Gavin will lead the company's engineering, concentrating on design offices, aircraft integration and architecture, research and technology, flight testing and airworthiness activities.

Head of operations Gerald Weber will oversee the centres of excellence with the help of a deputy, Bertrand George, who will also be in charge of all industrial processes with the aim of increasing efficiency and avoiding duplication.

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Source: Flight International

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