Five Strategies for Improving Aerospace Supply Chain Quality Management and Performance 2014-01-2231

Aerospace suppliers face the daunting task of constantly improving time-to-market, reducing cost of quality and turning compliance into a competitive advantage. Managing to these constraints while staying profitable is a challenge faced by the entire aerospace supply chain face today.

The intent of this presentation is to share five lessons learned on how aerospace suppliers can optimize for these three constraints while growing their businesses. The first is electronically enabling traceability both within a multi-tier supply chains and throughout suppliers. Automating traceability at the shop floor improves quality management and accelerates compliance. Specific methodologies and metrics used to accomplish this will be provided. Second, lessons learned from implementing Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) showing how shop floor visibility has a direct effect on supplier performance is illustrated with case studies and metrics. Third, lessons learned in making compliance pay by benchmarking performance to AS9100C, ISO9001, and ITAR standards is provided. Fourth, integrating engineering, program management, project management office, accounting and finance workflows together provides exceptional insight into the value of a project in real-time. Examples and metrics of performance will be provided illustrating this point as well. The final lesson learned is that having a single, unified system of record across a diverse aerospace supply chain leads to greater gains in collaboration and communication, leading to proven profitability gains.