Working Group Supply Chain

Supply Chain

Mission Statement

This group supports clusters at achieving a better performance and a sustainable strategic orientation by collecting the best information about: needs of the market, regional funding programmes, and future people. The WG strategy is one out of four working groups that promotes the efficiency of the EACP by enabling members to arrange future projects, to make dates arrangements, to share ideas and to exchange documents.

Potential Field of Joint Activity

Supply Chain Development – Productivity, Competitiveness & Growth

Assessment of Capability
Customer engagement and requirements
Supplier engagement and benefits
Key Performance Indicators (Schedule Adherence, Quality, Cost, Flexibility, Customer Service)
Programme delivery
Training course specifications and delivery requirements
Benchmarking
There could be opportunities for an EACP reward and recognition process.

Skills Development (Upskilling of the existing workforce)

Many existing supply chain programmes (SC21/NMCL in the UK, SPACE in the EU) provide a structured framework in which an organisation can understand their gaps in capability and then develop a skills plan to deliver the improvement.
There is an opportunity to work with training providers in the public and private sectors to communicate the skills requirements of the member companies of EACP clusters.
There is an opportunity to ensure that knowledge held within academia is supported to flow down to the entire supply chain.

Collaboration between Aerospace Suppliers and Clusters

This work package has in the past been dominated by European collaboration on Research & Technology.
However, there are many more opportunities for collaboration. For example,
The extended enterprise, where organisations collaborate to win new work packages that they could not deliver alone.
Aggregated procurement, where organisations collaborate to buy together and achieve cost reductions based on increased volumes.
Sharing intelligence, understanding that Europe is now competing as much with the developing world (Brazil, Russia, India, China).
Opportunities for Clusters to work together on Inward Investment and International Trade, in support of major aircraft programmes where supply chains need to be developed and require skills and/or technology transfer between countries/clusters.

Industry 4.0 – Robotics and Automation

A key work package to understand how Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in particular can understand the opportunity that Industrial Digitisation affords and where to start the journey to the inter-connected Smart-Factory.
There is an opportunity for some clusters to learn from the experiences of clusters in countries that might have made greater advances in this area (e.g. Germany / Italy).
There is an opportunity to shape what “good looks like” for an Industry 4.0 focussed SME. For example, what levels of Original Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) are being achieved in high-performing I4.0 companies.

Finance for Growth

The focus of this work package would be to understand the financing of the EU aerospace supply chain.
There is an opportunity to understand how financing works in different European regions. How easy, relatively, is it to access finance and for what (e.g. finance for capital equipment vs. finance for non-recurring costs).

Lead

Dr. David W. Bailey, North West Aerospace Alliance (United Kingdom)

Co-Lead

Dr. Franz Josef Kirschfink, Hamburg Aviation e.V. (Germany)

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