A lean enterprise initiative comprised of aerospace primes and their suppliers attempts to bring commonality to the supply chain. Its strategy is to provide a gage to measure lean progress and a road map to the higher levels of process maturity. All aerospace suppliers are implementing lean manufacturing strategies to some degree. They really have no choice in the matter, if they intend to survive in an intensely competitive global market. The aerospace primes, including Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, are becoming more like large-scale system integrators than component manufacturers. This puts more pressure on the supply chain to react quicker to changing production schedules while providing on-time deliveries. In the coming years, only the suppliers that take the strides right now to become more responsive to the primes' moving production lines will remain.
展开▼
