####Industry Analysis: The Fastener Supply Chain in Aerospace Industry

Authors

Emad Zilouchian Moghaddam, Arturo Cardenas Martinez, 
Saeed Koochak-Yazdi, Hani Murad

Abstract

In a highly regulated industry such as the Aerospace it is impossible to have suppliers entering and leaving as they please. Entry barriers raise the importance of understanding the behavior of the entire supply chain system ranging from turbine engines to fasteners; any part can force the plane production to stop when there is a supply shortage. Therefore, every purchasing order placed by Aerospace, from OEMs (original equipment manufacturer) to high-tech suppliers, is followed thoroughly. However, fasteners fall in the category of nuts and bolts for their “simplicity” and high volumes and their supply chain is ignored. Yet, the supply chain of fasteners plays a critical role in fasteners availability because of their high volume and limited resources in terms of capacity and raw material.

Ignoring fasteners supply chain’s crucial role by aerospace industry may lead to production stoppage due to lack of fasteners.

We developed a system dynamic model through interaction with key stakeholders from Bombardier Aerospace to examine fasteners’ supply chain in order to gain insights on its behavior, provide guidance to avoid potential problems in fasteners’ supply chain, and set the base for future analysis.

Project Details

Date: Sep 15, 2011

Author: Arturo Cardenas

Categories: project

Tagged: supply chain, system dynamics, vensim, business simulation, VMI

Client: Bombardier Aerospace

Website: http://www.systemdynamics.org/conferences/2012/proceed/papers/P1296.pdf