Keep up or die, the Society of British Aerospace Companies (SBAC) warned its members three years ago. Since then some suppliers have fallen by the wayside, but others have flourished thanks to a willingness to get in shape. Liz Moscrop reports.
Low-cost suppliers from emerging markets have been snapping at the heels of UK businesses, winning work from prime and first-tier companies. Low-cost economies increased their technical capabilities, and this eroded confidence in the superiority of British technological skills.
Last year the Society of British Aerospace Companies (SBAC) got serious about Britain’s weakening muscle in the international arena and decided to tone up the flabby UK supply chain. Its first exercise was to set up a competitiveness initiative, SC21, which it launched at the Farnborough Air Show last year with nine members.
Today 150 companies have signed up and it is going from strength to strength, with growing support from leading aerospace and defence companies. The key drivers behind SC21 are to: Reduce duplication and waste by minimising the number of customer audits undertaken; develop a common and co-ordinated approach to supplier development that identifies lead companies and common metrics; and to strengthen relationships throughout the supply chain.
The SBAC developed a national supplier map detailing 18 important supply chains. The thinking was to streamline 7,000 supplier companies into segments supplying two or more key customers from companies such as AgustaWestland, Airbus UK, Bombardier and Goodrich. Then a series of common standards was created, so that a supplier audited by one firm does not have to undergo the same process again with another customer. Dr Sally Howes, SBAC’s director general says: The key customers group now provides a mechanism for directly delivering cost savings to companies and demonstrates their willingness to work together to achieve global competitiveness.”
Lean machining
To add to the fitness regime, suppliers have slimmed down to match their customers’desire for lean manufacturing. Langford Lodge Engineering, based in Northern Ireland, has partitioned its factory into specific manufacturing cells including turning and milling, a fabric assembly shop and a sheet metal fabrication cell. Its client list includes BAe Systems, Goodrich and Shorts for whom it also offers supply chain management and integration services. With almost 700 employees and sales in excess of £55 million, the group has the critical mass to become a leading first tier supplier.
The firm hired a business improvement agent to identify areas across the board to remodel and has developed its own supply chain, which uses low cost sources.
Langford Lodge also subcontracts work to its neighbour, Moyola Precision Engineering, which supplies specialist tooling and fixtures, sub-assemblies and complete assemblies for civil aviation customers.
Bombardier accounts for a great deal of the UK’s aerospace manufacturing. In addition to its Shorts plant in Northern Ireland, it creates advanced composite structures at its Dunmurry and Newtownabbey facilities in Belfast, and sheet metal components in Newtownards. Pierre Beaudoin, Bombardier’s president and COO, believes Belfast will become a centre of excellence for research work, while high-volume, lower labour cost jobs will be outsourced to other regions, such as Mexico. “We have also collaborated with the universities here and invested in training. We see this as part of our research process and it helps us develop our capability,” Beaudoin says.
To ensure the new firmer supply chain is not all brawn with no brain, Invest Northern Ireland has part funded Belfast’s centre of excellence for integrated aircraft technology, (CEIAT). The centre is the brainchild of Professor Srinivasan Raghunathan. Set up to support the international aerospace industry, CEIAT attracts students from all over the world, researches industry processes and constantly seeks to improve costs and performance.
This strategy has paid dividends. CEIAT now attracts companies from all over the world. Says Raghunathan: “At the outset, Invest Northern Ireland advised us to create an international world-class research advisory board. So we had people from NASA, Lockheed Martin, Boeing and other aeronautical technical advisors. These people visited us once a year, which ensured our work is world class. This gave us more contact with companies such as Thales, BAE systems and Airbus.”
Source: Flight Daily News
