For the program to soar, the aircraft maker has to get all its supply chain partners onboard.
European aircraft giant Airbus is one of most vocal user advocates of RFID as a way to bring unprecedented efficiencies to the supply chain. In the Airbus vision, radio tagging and tracking everything from landing gear, to wings, to bolts during a plane’s assembly would shower Airbus and its suppliers with all manner of enterprise benefits, including minimizing inventory, maximizing production lines, and expediting invoicing.
If only all of Airbus’ suppliers would book a reservation on the company’s long-haul RFID journey, then manufacturing might truly transform.
Airbus, the world’s largest maker of commercial aircraft, started dabbling in RFID about eight years ago and ratcheted up its commitment in 2006 as part of an executive-driven overhaul of resources that the company calls Airbus Resource Planning (ARP). The Toulouse, France-based pan-European manufacturer has since started a series of RFID pilots and live implementations meant to engage suppliers in the ARP initiative.
“One of the cornerstones of Airbus' philosophy was to develop an approach that maximized benefits to as many players as possible,” says Carlo Nizam, Airbus’ head of value chain visibility and RFID within the ARP program. “To be blunt, the RFID story cannot succeed if only Airbus benefits.”
Airbus is off to a good start with a portion of its suppliers that Nizam calls the “closed loop.” These suppliers send RFID-equipped reusable containers that continuously travel back and forth between suppliers and Airbus’ Hamburg, Germany, final assembly facility. The containers house everything from seats, to coat racks, to sinks, and they come from external suppliers as well as internal subassembly facilities, such as Laupheim, Germany-based Airbus Air Cabin and Airbus’ Hamburg-based Cabin Equipment Centre.
RFID technology has cut down the amount of time it takes Airbus to enter data about the contents as they arrive. Since 2006, it has helped Airbus reduce the number of containers that feed its A380 final assembly by 8% to 4,500. That translates into cost savings for Airbus because, among other reasons, “someone has to pay for those containers, and at the end of the day, the cost comes back to Airbus,” Nizam says.
What would step savings up an order of magnitude would be if Airbus could convince the “open” portion of its suppliers to affix RFID to the shipping labels of the boxes they send Airbus.
“We’re starting from the inside of Airbus and working out,” Nizam says.
Two years ago, “open” suppliers Messier-Bugatti and Michelin agreed to test out RFID. For four months, Michelin attached RFID labels to the external packaging of tires it shipped to a third-party warehouse called Mazères Aviation in Toulouse. Messier-Bugatti did the same with brake system parts. Other suppliers also participated.
“We spent a lot of time, especially during the scoping and trial phases by involving all industry players, particularly our suppliers and airlines customers to listen to their inputs and feedback,” Nizam says.
