Improvement service

The major purpose is to implement personal initiatives that make significant improvements in Quality performance and to reduce costs throughout the value stream by establishing and maintaining dynamic co-operation between the Aerospace actors.

SPACE™ improvement service focuses on the implementation of the best practices on the main processes used by the Aeronautical Supply Chain to deliver their products and services On Time, On Quality and On Cost to achieve customer satisfaction.

The SPACE™ services proposed cover the field of Quality at large by helping on implementing at associate members’ initiative by:

Developing a robust Quality Management System (QMS),
Best practice implementation of the main Supply Chain processes,
Improvement of the .planning processes

These actions are in order to achieve significant improvements in term of:

On-time deliveries (OTD)
Cost Reduction in Sales, Inventory and Operations Planning (SIOP).

An improvement project is conducted in two phases:

Phase 1: diagnostic. An assessment is realized during 1 or 2 days, in order to identify the scope of the improvement actions. To execute this assessment, SPACE™ uses the EAQG (European Aerospace Quality Group) standard tools (Supplier Selection and Capability Assessment, from the SCMH – Supply Chain Management Handbook)

Phase 2: action plan. According to the results of the assessment, a plan is defined by the supplier management and SPACE™. For the implementation of the action plan, the project team uses the set of standard tools validated by SPACE™.

Then, a steering committee consisted of SPACE™, SPACE™ experts and representatives of associate members follows the action plan implemented

With the improvement services of SPACE™, associate members benefit from the education brought by our skillful experts and focusing on Supply Chain methodologies, shared work process and use of our common measurement and standard tools. So far, the SPACE™ has launched 20 improvement projects in associate members’ sites.

The improvement projects are able to be conducted:

At the customers’ initiative (also called “push process”).

SPACE™ will provide free resources to support the project

At the .supplier’s initiative ( called “pull process”)

It is conducted by external resources (a consultant labeled by SPACE™ – see referral services) contracted by the supplier, at the supplier request, SPACE™ may participate in the assessment phase and the action plan implementation, as a technical advisor for associate members with free of charge.

The project may be funded by regional initiatives (e.g. DRIRE Midi-Pyrénées, Regional Chamber of Commerce*)

*A specific Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is being negotiated with Midi-Pyrénées DRIRE (Regional District Public Organization) and should be signed by end of 2008. The purpose of this MOU is to support the development of consulting missions dedicated to process improvement.

The SPACE™ team works on development of such support programs with other regional districts and professional public organizations for the benefit of our community.