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Boeing and Honeywell develop Integrated Materials Management (IMM) supply chain
September 2, 2007
While not directly related to this story, EMS provider Plexus does count Honeywell as one of its customers.
Boeing has signed an agreement with Honeywell Aerospace that will allow them to significantly reduce an airline's maintenance costs by providing expendable parts.
The companies teamed as part of Boeing's Integrated Materials Management (IMM) initiative. Through this program, Boeing and suppliers like Honeywell maintain an airline's inventory of spare parts - providing items as needed. By reducing the airline's own inventory, IMM reduces the airline's cost of doing business.
Honeywell is a supplier of consumable hardware products and services and a distributor of standard, proprietary and hard-to-find parts. They provide 725,000 parts from 150 global manufacturers and 2,600 suppliers.
"Adding Honeywell Consumable Solutions to the Integrated Materials Management family of customers and network suppliers is a strategic move for both Boeing and our customers," said Joe Brummitt, director of the IMM Program. "The IMM suppliers and customers will greatly benefit from the extensive knowledge and experience that Honeywell brings to the expanding IMM business scope."
IMM is considered the next step in expanding Boeing services to suppliers throughout the world to provide value for airline customers and supplier partners by building on existing materials management programs with airlines. Current customers for IMM include AirTran Airways, All Nippon Airways, Delta Air Lines, Japan Airlines, KLM, Japan Transocean Air, Singapore Airlines and SIAEC. Network supplier partners include WS Wilson, Honeywell, UFC Aerospace, Satair, Hamilton Sundstrand, Avio-Diepen, and the Boeing subsidiary, Aviall.
Source: Boeing, VentureOutsource.com
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This is a good concept and
This is a good concept and will save all parties quite a bit of money in the long run. A couple of issues need to be addresses in greater depth; supply stream logistics and retrograde of broken parts.
First, is the logistics behind getting the replacement parts to the end user in a timely manner using just in time (JIT) logistics principles. A down aircraft can cost the user a considerable amount of money while waiting for a part to be delivered, this is not news. Although there are work arounds like parts substitution from one aircraft to another it is much better to have the parts available the same day that you discover the need for it. Boeing, Honeywell and other suppliers will have to maintain some stockage at strategic locations throughout the world of "critical" and high usage parts that can be delivered within a day in order for this to be useful to the maintenance provider. The maintenance companies will have to determine what each of their customer routinely use and the suppliers will have to determine what critical / high useage parts are and how many of those to keep on hand. The next concern is how to ship the part . This can be addressed either with the end user providing the shipping (an airline for example) or outsourcing to a shipper (FEDEX, DHL, UPS, etc.).
Once the part has arrived and been replaced the issue of retrograding the damaged part comes into play. Obviously there are several choices when it comes to the disposal of the damaged part (throw it away, recycle the basic materials, or retrograde for repair). My personal opinion is to recycle or retrograde the part. Recycling will recoup some money for the end user just in the cost of the basic materials (metals in particular). Retrograding can also save the end user money. If the manufacturer will accept retrograded items for repair and provide the end user with a discount on the refurbished item both parties save money. Caution should be exercised with this and the parts manufacturers as well as the end users need to implement a tracking method to determine the life cycle of refurbished parts.
Overall I believe this is a good program and when managed correctly will decrease aircraft down time while increasing the profitability of all parties involved.