Industry Forum

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Aerospace is a major engineering, manufacturing and service industry within the UK, significant on both a European and a global scale. It employs over 100,000 people directly, and over 220,000 indirectly, and is one of the UK’s largest exporters adding around £2.8 billion annually to the UK balance of trade. Besides famous name global companies (several of which are UK owned) the sector encompasses around 2600 companies across all regions of the UK many of which are SMEs especially at tiers 2 and 3 in the supply chain.

The industry uses a broad range of skills and disciplines, including engineering and science, production, service, supply chain, training and financial skills at all levels. It is central to high value added advanced manufacturing in the UK which is a national priority under the Coalition’s policy of rebalancing the UK economy. As such a high rate of technical innovation typifies the sector.

Opportunities ahead for the UK aerospace sector, in the medium term include the A320/737 series New Short Range replacement programmes and unmanned aerial systems; whilst in the shorter term, new programmes such as the Airbus A350XWB and A400M, Boeing 787, Bombardier C Series and possible Airbus A320 and Boeing 737re-engining offer a substantial workload.

New regional and business aircraft and emerging platforms from new prime contractors in China, India, Japan, Russia and Brazil are also targets for the UK sector. Next generation rotorcraft will be developed, offering lower noise and operating costs offering much higher speeds. Environmental regulations and considerations are key drivers for the latest technology developments, which the UK is particularly well-placed to exploit.

To make the most of these opportunities, improved supply chain performance and management is critical. This was acknowledged by the sector when it launched SC21 (21st Century Supply Chains) at the Farnborough Airshow in 2006. SC21 is a major change programme designed to accelerate the competitiveness of the aerospace and defence industry by raising the performance of its supply chains.

SC21 has been endorsed by the aerospace prime companies for the benefit of their complete supply chains which include many SMEs and also by the UK Ministry of Defence. To date there are over 500 businesses committed to improving their performance and thereby positively impacting the competitiveness of the UK aerospace & defence supply chain.

From its initial base in the automotive sector, Industry Forum has worked extensively in UK aerospace sector for over a decade and has carried out numerous process improvement and supply chain improvement projects successfully.

Supply chain solutions with Industry Forum begin by assessing and setting improvement strategy and goals. This includes analysis of current and future supply chain impact to the host organisation against a number of key variables, resulting in a comprehensive improvement plan. Industry Forum can help firms deliver every aspect of the improvement plan and as far as the aerospace sector is concerned make decisive progress towards sustainable global competitiveness.

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Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is best known for its use world-wide by major companies particularly in the food and chemical sectors.  However, as the UK moves more and more into capital intensive advanced manufacturing the TPM approach will pay dividends in many sectors and in firms of all sizes and mark a path to the achievement of true global competitiveness.

TPM started as an approach to maintenance which aimed to integrate equipment maintenance into the manufacturing process. TPM was originated in Japan in 1971 from the Japanese Institute of Plant Maintenance (JIPM) following a couple of decades of development in various major companies.  Since then TPM has expanded substantially to form a structured approach deploying a comprehensive set of tools and techniques in order to eliminate all losses across a whole organisation and throughout the value stream.

TPM has emerged as a credible way to give organisations the structure to make any improvements sustainable through employee ownership. A 12 step structure guides the organisation through the deployment of 8 Pillars (a type of major activity which is deployed to eliminate the losses) combined with a number of more traditional improvement tools. The key to its success is the overlapping group structure deployed and the link to the organisation’s Policy Deployment method.

The word ‘total’ in TPM signifies total organisation or total participation. Everyone in the organisation at all levels and across all functions plays an active role in TPM including contract and part time employees. It also means total life-cycle, pre-empting losses of all types throughout the life cycle of the production system.  Finally it means total effectiveness, judged by maximising the Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) performance measure.

OEE is a metric developed to measure the success of early TPM programmes.  OEE enables organisations to benchmark and monitor their progress with simple, easy to understand metrics and it is one of the seven key measures of Quality, Cost and Delivery (QCD) which underpin all Industry Forum’s offerings.  It is not unknown for the initial measurement of OEE at the start of a project to be less than 40%.  A well-managed TPM programme can, over a period of years raise this to over 90%. This means that the productivity of capital has effectively doubled. However, the philosophy of TPM is that the quest for improvement is unlimited and should never plateau.

The TPM approach incorporates a proactive style of thinking, aiming at a zero condition or zero losses – zero accidents, zero defects and zero breakdowns. The traditional data driven reactive improvement approach will by itself never achieve a zero condition. The reactive data approach should be used to build the experience and understanding of the workforce to allow the adoption of a proactive approach.

TPM incorporates the familiar Demming Cycle – Plan, Do, Check, Act – and maps this onto the process model.

The role of management is critical in TPM – demonstrating and reinforcing the correct behaviour and attitude throughout the entire organisation, providing leadership and showing commitment to achieving and sustaining improvements. Management  must  provide a clear link between the improvement required and the policies that evolve from the long term vision and goals of the organisation.  Priorities must be set and resources allocated with an appropriate level of follow up. Management must allocate time, initially for training in the appropriate tools and then and in the long term for the continual deployment of the tools.

Industry Forum  can offer TPM Assessment, TPM Consultancy and TPM Training services to organisations in all sectors on a global scale. It is one of only six accredited JIPM TPM Assessment Agencies in the world and the only agency with assessors speaking English as their native first language.

 

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There have already been a number of important and encouraging automotive announcements this year – from Nissan, Jaguar Land Rover, Vauxhall and BMW amongst others. Some experts are talking about the annual volume of cars climbing back to over 2 million within a few years; but what do these developments mean for the UK automotive supply chain? The output from the vehicle manufacturers is already on a healthy upward climb out of the recession but the growth in the supply chain output has been rather more modest.

Of course, the pattern of supply is constantly evolving and we sometimes forget that the automotive supply chain isn’t just manufacturing. It increasingly involves a set of expanding and successful business services firms and indeed Industry Forum would place itself amongst these. The numbers here are harder to estimate, but we do know that the whole business services sector has doubled its exports in the last decade and this trend is set to continue with smaller UK owned specialist services firms developing an even broader customer footprint across the global automotive scene – a classic example of knowledge based competitiveness.

A good example of changing patterns of supply, as the auto sector evolves, is the position of Lotus Cars in the manufacture of the high performance electric sports vehicles produced for Tesla in California. The Tesla Roadster is the first production automobile to use lithium-ion battery cells and the first production battery all-electric to travel more than 200 miles per charge. Tesla’s contract with Lotus Cars to provide 2,400 Elise gliders expires at the end of this year at which point the Roadster production will come to an end.

Some analysts are even saying that by 2020 the procurement function as such will no longer exist in VMs and supply chain relations will be serviced by common ‘cloud’ software applications that will yield total supply chain transparency. However, the supply chain data specialists, Supplier Business, tell a different story with their latest report, out in July 2011.

Their study,  which measures the performance of global carmakers in managing their relationships with their supply base, shows that ratings have fallen by 7.6% on average between 2010 and 2011. This marks a return to those levels achieved in 2009, indicating a general deterioration of relations between suppliers and automakers on a global basis over the last twelve months and comes after 2 years of marked improvements when the index increased by 3% and 3.6% respectively. Does the uncertain path of the expansion of the global economy mean that we are going back to price-down warfare that marked some of the most dramatic periods in the sector’s history over the last two decades?

Here at Industry Forum we take the view that good supply chain relationships are based on certain fundamentals which are easy enough to describe but require care and discipline to put into practice. At the heart are seven powerful measures which capture the essence of Quality, Cost and Delivery. In the past decade we have proved our approach in the auto and aero sectors in a number of substantial projects. Case studies on our web site. www.industryforum.co.uk, illustrate this approach in depth.  We also teach a number of powerful Quality Management Systems, drawn from across the world, which can help primes to build up a well founded confidence in the supply chain. We do not see these fundamentals disappearing and indeed, if the UK vehicle output grows as some predict, they will become more important than ever.

 

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Traditional Business Improvement programmes focus on the core operations of the business of value adding and  supply chain. It is also essential to develop an improvement culture within the broader business process areas.

Industry Forum have a range of practical solutions to help you improve purchasing and logistics to support the journey towards business excellence. These solutions can be tailored to meet your individual needs.

MMOG-LE

The Materials Management Operations Guideline/Logistics Evaluation (MMOG/LE) defines a common, industry-wide set of best practices can help to improve delivery performance.

MMOG/LE is an assessment tool used to measure and improve materials planning and logistics efficiency within a manufacturing facility. It is designed to eliminate supply-related delivery risk for all partners within the supply chain. The intent of the MMOG/LE is to validate the organization has robust material planning and delivery processes in place to support overall business objectives.

Vehicle manufacturers including Ford, GM, Chrysler, JLR, PSA, Volvo car and Volvo Truck require annual submission of their suppliers’ score and/or assessment. Although the tool was developed for the automotive industry, it can be used by any manufacturing organisation to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of their processes.

To find out more about MMOG-LE and the training courses that we provide please visit the MMOG-LE section.

 

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