Boeing and Airbus delivery delays, procurement.

Boeing & Airbus delivery delay's; Aerospace Procurement & Supply Chain nightmare.

I started my career in procurement in aerospace, and it is hard to see the ultimate failure of the
entire industry,   to keep up with global procurement and supply chain standards.

Airbus has had several delays in delivery and now also Boeing is suffering from component
delays on their 787 dreamliner (?). The question rises....what is the problem, with manufacturers
in aerospace ??? Is there no airliner asking them to meet the agreed ? And why is nobody
interested ?

Well...................let me advise the following for aircraft component buyers or component manufacturers:

1. Hire both a procurement and supply chain consultant or add value in your internal organization,
    to avoid global procurement or supply chain problems such as Boeing or Airbus.
    Any professional procurement or purchasing executive and organisation will not spoil lots of
    $$$ on non efficient manufacturers or suppliers whom do not have their procurement or
    supply chain properly organized. So find yourself a vendor manager and a professional
    department.

2. Set up a cross functional teams with procurement, supply chain, production, engineering and
    business development and review regulary if you are on the right track or if there are ideas for
    improvement.

3. Make a solid planning with the projectteam to improve at least some bottelnecks before next
    half year and review the results after this period.

3. Never rely only on your engineers to get product development or improvement done in an
    efficient time period, hire a highly qualified procurement manager to push both internal as
    external engineers (and business development managers) at suppliers. It might save you
    engineering costs as as it does not nescessarily have to be your engineer that comes up
    with the solution.

If you don't, you might endure a severe aircraft procurement or supply chain problem, which
causes turbo failures to your aircraft component production-lines. And it might even shut down
your engines for once and for all, if you have servicelevel contracts whom become expensive
and you cannot life that long on credit as Boeing or Airbus can.

The moral of this story is that you shouldn't under estimate the Global procurement process.
Find a good consultant, who can advise you on this matter, or set up your procurement
organisation. And.....never ever be arrogant when new concepts are introduced, as you
merely postpone the change, while you could have been part of it.

Want to know more about global procurement, and foreseeing delays in deliveries ?
Contact Erwin Overdijk, Managing Director, at info@procurementnetwerk.nl

© Erwin Overdijk, Managing Director, Procurementnetwork

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