FAC roadshow highlights 'challenge and opportunity' at GKN-Westland

FAC roadshow highlights 'challenge and opportunity' at GKN-Westland

FAC roadshow highlights "challenge and opportunity" at GKN-Westland

Keywords Helicopters, Westland

Around 35 Farnborough Aerospace Consortium members attended the Third FAC Roadshow, held at GKN-Westland Helicopters, Yeovil. It provided an opportunity to improve the two-way flow of information between GKN-Westland's procurement professionals and the hundreds of specialist small and medium enterprises represented by Farnborough Aerospace Consortium.

Rob Crook, director of material at GKN-Westland, gave an overview of the business, highlighting the strong commercial position regarding military helicopter versions and the likely future trends in worldwide manufacturing consolidation. In particular, the alliance between GKN-Westland Helicopters and Agusta in Italy was seen as resulting in a more soundly based business with a wider product range, an improved skills base and strengths in both military and civil sectors.

Combining resources under a unified management would allow the costs of the EH 101 Helicopter (developed jointly with Agusta) to be driven down even further ­ a fundamental strategy to the future of both companies. Prospects for Lynx and Apache were also encouraging.

Rob spelled out the rigorous demands which GKN-Westland places on suppliers and candidly stated that many fell down in terms of either speed of response or quality. He recognised that "becoming a new supplier to Westland was not easy" in view of the technical and cultural learning curve involved. Nevertheless, he invited FAC members with available production capacity to write to him at GKN-Westland, Yeovil BA20 2YB, UK.

The challenge (and opportunity) of the company's projected programme of aircraft deliveries is enormous. Eleven aircraft in 1998; 29 aircraft in 1999; 44 aircraft in 2000. Turnover projected to rise from £500 million in 1998 to £1,029 million in 2000. He reported that material usage alone would increase by 40 per cent this year, placing even greater demands on the current supplier base.

He also outlined the other key themes for the year: integrated product teams, i.e. supply chain teams; SCRIA (supply chain relationships in aerospace) training, i.e. working together with suppliers; a production line approach for EH 101 with process improvement to meet delivery requirements; common processes and data accuracy to optimise benefits from the new SAP IT system; risk management and inspection at supplier.

Essentially a case of "business improvement through people", profit improvement at GKN-Westland was to be driven by schedule adherence, lead time reduction and quality improvement throughout the supply chain.

Rob Crook is also chairman of the Steering Committee for the SCRIA Programme. He explained that he wanted SCRIA to operate even more professionally and proactively ­ he would be looking at the possibility of using outside consultants to help make it work more effectively.

FAC chairman, Chris West, led the FAC presentation team comprising David Seall, Peter Bradshaw and John F. Gregory, in its summary of FAC initiatives and objectives.