2 Crewe Road North
Crewe Toll
Edinburgh, EDH EH5 2XS
United Kingdom
Leonardo MWL Airborne and Space Systems can be regarded as a high technology, high value, low volume design and manufacturing company. By definition, the majority of their products perform critical functions on board military and civil aircraft either as a complete system or as key elements of a system such as a radar receiver, transmitter or processor, commonly referred to as ‘black boxes’. These black boxes vary in value, complexity, function and contract conditions: delivery rates can vary from one or two to over twenty per month. LMWL’s manufacturing strategy is to concentrate on core activities, undertaking some key lower level manufacturing but primarily, it is to undertake high level assembly, integration and test of major ‘bought in’ modules and sub-assemblies. This strategy ensures that LMWL deliver a fully tested, environmentally screened, interchangeable ‘black box’ to their customers.
Given a typical product work breakdown structure, the procured content can represent up to 80% of the product value, the remainder being associated with in house labour including assembly and test, support and project management. As the majority of product content is assembled and tested outwith the company in the Supply Chain, special care must be given to how the procurement of these items is managed. This is because Leonardo does not have direct control over these sub contracted manufacturing processes and it is in this arena that opportunities for defects can arise.
This workshop will discuss the challenges Leonardo has encountered from purchasing high value, high technology modules and sub- assemblies and how they manage the procurement of said items as a cross functional team . This theme of ‘working together’ across disciplines is developing strongly in the Edinburgh business and can be described as ‘Procurement Engineering’
Leonardo are delighted to invite our CeeD Colleagues and members to share in our experience in this quickly developing aspect of their business at Crewe Toll.