2008 Articles
November 21, 2008
Supply Chain Magazine, France: "ATR - A project of total reengineering"
Faced with an exponential growth in sales following revived interest for its turboprop aircraft, back in 2005 ATR launched the ASTRE project to reorganize the management of its spare parts. As well as a complete revision of its processes, of a reorganization of its research department and of its action plan towards its logistics partners and suppliers, the turboprop aircraft manufacturer also decided to replace its proprietary information system with SAP R3 and to pilot its stocks with the Servigistics solution.
By Cathy Polge
A 50 to 70-seater turboprop aircraft manufacturer (ATR 42 et 72) de 50 à 70 places, ATR targets the regional client markets around the world (fleets of one or two up to several dozen planes). Its support division manages the maintenance of the whole of this park. The spare parts service depends upon it. In 2005, the assembler launched the project Astre (ATR Spares Total Reengineering) to revise its spare parts management and adapt to the market. Indeed, having suffered in the 1990s at the hands of private jets, propeller aircraft enjoyed a marked revival of interest in 2004. So much so, in fact, that ATR had to respond to the demand from its new clients and geographically extend its action range. Moreover, the global leader in the turboprop market saw its production quadruple in three years, going from a yearly average of 15 aircraft to 60. “Such a growth in demand has generated an upsurge in the need for spares, pushing us all along to improve the level of service of their distribution”, explains Olivier Clair, Spares Forecasting & Inventory Control Manager at ATR. “The Astre project was launched in this context, to improve our ways of functioning and the quality of the service delivered to our clients. It is a veritable long-term project, an enterprise project”.
A large building site
Focused on spare parts, the Astre project is also concerned with other divisions, such as Finance and Research, namely through the transition from a proprietary ERP solution to SAP. Helped by consultancy firm Step Consulting, ATR started mapping all its processes and rethinking its organisation (e.g. of the Research department). Several actions were also undertaken, such as the restructuring of the logistics network: the central warehouse in Toulouse was relocated to a central hub in Paris; the Washington site was moved to Miami; the Singapore one stayed in place, with a new site opened in Oakland, New Zealand.
50% owned by EADS, ATR equally leveraged the synergy with this large industrial group to benefit from frame agreements with suppliers such as DHL, UPS… thereby improving performance. Sourcing action plans were put together with suppliers to ensure a collaborative working mode, namely when it came to sales forecasting.
Finally, a large building site on stocks was opened, including the selection of an optimising software (APS for Advanced Planning System).
Read the article in French at SupplyChainMagazine.com by clicking here.
