CSC Smart Business UK Edition February - High fliers
High fliers
Global transformation through standardised IT is helping aerospace and defence company Cobham become more flexible to better serve customers
Cobham is in the middle of a transformation programme to build scale in its core business and deliver world class operational performance. Customers are demanding more flexibility and great responsiveness – shorter lead times, faster time to market, higher quality and lower prices.
Cobham operates in a range of distinct aerospace and defence markets, from marine and airborne satellite communications to avionics, radar subsystems and naval antennae.
The operating challenge is made complex because each of the markets it operates in are distinct and prone to independent budgetary pressures with ebbs and flows in demand. At the moment, for example, defence spending is, on the whole, either flat or down. Conversely, there is a great deal of activity in civil aviation as new passenger jets from Boeing, Bombardier and Airbus attract global orders. This growth, however, is not mirrored in executive jets for which sales growth, as one might expect, have flattened during the current global economic downturn.
Customer focus
Through transforming operations to tap in to growth markets, and shift manufacturing capacity accordingly, Cobham Executive Vice President of Operations, Pete Raby, believes the company will now serve customers far better than if it had not acted.
"If we hadn't begun our transformation programme, I guess the worst case scenario would have been we might have become less relevant to our customers in a few years time," he explains.
"Instead we've got teams targeting growth areas and we've had to be flexible in allocating investment between different markets and geographic locations. At the same time, we're building more agility in to our manufacturing process. We're working to ensure our plants can respond to these growth areas in line with customer demand, by flexing production of different products up and down as needed.
"Essentially we're on a journey to make ourselves a lot more responsive to our customers by being able to offer them what they want when they want it."
IT support
Behind the transformation programme Cobham is on a drive to standardise the IT systems which support its staff and manufacturing capabilities. The company has partnered with CSC to deliver a new Oracle and Microsoft-based ERP system. It is being rolled out over the next three years across 13 locations to ensure that, within these core sites, IT systems are fully interoperable. This will allow best practices to be shared and manufacturing facilities better aligned to customer demand.
"The central premise of our transformation programme is to have robust capacity and production planning and we need our thirteen key locations operating on an effective and robust system," explains Raby.
"That's why we're investing in the new ERP system. We've got core business production functions on there from order acceptance, at the start of the process, right through to manufacturing and finance. There are also a lot of HR capabilities because we have to support our work force moving between facilities through the same IT systems."
Resourcing key
For companies embarking on a similar transformation process – to make their staff, products and services flexible in line with customer demand – Raby's main advice is not to underestimate the size of the resourcing challenge. While programmes will vary from one company to another, and so will the IT requirements needed to support them, the common factor is that they are carried out by people. These experts not only need to implement fundamental change but also fully communicate with affected staff throughout the process. It means pooling sufficient resources can be a challenge.
"I wouldn't pretend it's a startling revelation but the main points are you simply can't communicate too much with people and you can never have enough people helping you roll out a transformation programme," he says.
"You can plan all you like but you never really know the scope of the job until you get into it and, like most other people that have carried out similar programmes, we found that resourcing has been an issue. It's very labour intensive to have teams establishing what needs to be done at each location and then start the process by communicating with affected staff. We've been holding leadership conferences and events at each location but you never know if the whole message gets across each time because people are away or don't quite take it all in. So, we've been repeating and updating the messaging and it's taken a lot of resources."
The global transformation work is to be rolled out over the next three years. It is expected that each facility will require a dedicated team to spend six to nine months implementing the new project, communicating progress with staff as well as working with CSC to integrate the new ERP.
Learn more about CSC's work with Aerospace and Defence