Managing supplier transitions: Development and performance through work transfer

The dynamics of the aerospace production environment today requires companies to effectively utilize all available resources to remain competitive. The cost and quality of hardware offered in the market is a key element, not only of the capabilities of each supplier, but also the supplier network providing aircraft components to the enterprise. To remain competitive, major aerospace industries are increasingly implementing supplier development programs to maintain capable and high performing supplier bases. This case study presents a concept of outplant engineering´s role and the effort to improve performance of a supplier from a manufacturing and tooling perspective. The experiences from this case study suggests that early engagement is the most important supplier development prerequisite before undertaking operational work transfer activities such as technical and capacity capabilities. There will always be emergent support requests in the initial production phase of new hardware. Collaborative inter-organizational communication is identified as an important supporting factor in transforming an organization´s effort to develop performance improvement capabilities with the supply chain.