Aerospace & Defense

• 20% Reduction in aircraft cycle times
• 15 - 20% Reduction in cost-per-visit
• $5 Million in annual savings

After opening a state-of-the-art maintenance facility, the airline realized that it was not performing to expectations, and they were not receiving the value from it that they needed to be competitive. Their processes were inefficient, and they needed to improve critical path management to reduce visit costs for their 737 fleet.

• 25% Decrease in drawing cycle time
• 45% Decrease in returns for re-work
• 40% Increase in on-time releases
• 121% Increase in productivity

As the company shifted its business internationally, it found a much more competitive market that complicated its product mix and pricing structure. This put tremendous pressure on margins, which management responded to by cutting costs through early retirements and layoffs. This caused a huge knowledge drain and loss of managerial control as many who left were senior managers. This was complicated by the company’s matrix organizational structure, where engineering and manufacturing resources were shared across programs.

• More than $200,000 annual reduction in BOM
• Stronger supplier relationships

As the client’s business grew and demand started taking off, it quickly outgrew the start-up pricing and contract terms it held with two of its most crucial supply chain partners. Where once they only produced one or two aircraft per year, they were now capable of producing 18 aircraft annually. They also had plans in place to increase annual production to 24 by year end.

• 40% reduction in multi-million dollar logistics spend
• Used analytics-driven negotiations

Our client historically allocated its freight spend apart from its bill of materials, which had been its primary focus during prior cost reduction strategies. When shipping costs finally went under a microscope, they discovered that freight charges were rising at rates disproportionate to the increase in annual aircraft production, and logistics expenditures per aircraft were far too high.

• 6% Improvement in aircraft availability
• 90% Reduction in penalities
• 85% Reduction in buy-backs
• 17% Improvement in weekend tasks attained

Facing a very competitive landscape, the company had an urgent need to improve its customer service, increase equipment availability, and dispatch reliability. Improving their performance would not only enable them to win more business, and retain existing clients, but would also yield financial gains from reduced penalties and buy-backs.

• $750,000 working capital improvement

With a near 12 times increases in their annual production, our client quickly outgrew many of the original payment terms and credit limits it established with its part suppliers. Not only were they troubled by the administrative complexities of small payment windows for parts invoices, but their credit limits were no longer sufficient to support the increased demand for parts to support shorter production cycles.