How efficiency took flight at Safran
By Greg Lovell | Blue Print Editorial Team
Partnership, data tracking, and on-site supply management boost savings and production. When you’re one of the largest players in the aerospace industry and production runs around the clock, there’s no margin for miscalculations or supply chain delays. The costs – both to customer relations and the bottom line – quickly multiply.
Safran knows this firsthand. With approximately 90,000 employees across 30 countries, Safran is a leading industrial high-technology company with more than 125 years of experience and partnerships with some of the largest organizations in the world.
Needless to say, their production is massive and supply chain needs are demanding. One division, Safran Landing Systems, is located in Walton, Kentucky, and specializes in the production of wheels, landing gear, and braking systems.
“Specifically in the plant here, we produce wheels and brakes for the entire Boeing family as well as numerous military aircraft,” said Phillippe Garnier, CEO of Safran Landing Systems.
With production buzzing and the related needs ramping back up post-COVID, Safran needed to find ways to support their operations efficiently.
“What's very important for our customers is on-time delivery, and from that aspect, Fastenal is playing a role because if we don't have the supplies at the right time, then we cannot support our main mission,” Garnier continued.
Safran’s operation leans heavily on the supply chain. They need reliable suppliers to support production purchasing, commercial purchasing, and inventory management.
"Our needs are always moving for our market. We have a lot of new improvements, and every year our business changes." -- Arnaud Holz, Operations Manager at Safran Landing Systems
Arnaud Holz, Operations Manager at Safran Landing Systems, says Fastenal stepped up to fill the supplier role.
“We started our partnership more than five years ago with the vending program. It was just a couple of machines on the landing systems Kentucky site.”
Since then, Holz helped expand the partnership to include over 50 machines and FASTCrib.
“With the partnership we have with Fastenal, we were able to have two full-time Fastenal employees on site and a specific crib. These two people are able to manage the spot-buy and the vending machines to be sure we always have inventory to run our daily operation,” Holz said.
Increasing production
"The vending program, I would say, has been a very good program to generate some cost savings for us." -- Arnaud Holz
“FASTCrib gives us some flexibility. We are also able to be sure that we never miss a tool and we are never in shortage,” said Holz.
Fastenal District Manager Jack Bishop says FASTCrib took Safran and Fastenal’s partnership to another level, providing the information and insights crucial for sound decision-making.
“Besides just the product, what is really important to Safran is understanding the data. Fastenal comes to their production meetings. We sit down, we talk about weekly usages, anything that may have broken, anything that may have gone wrong. Fastenal is a part of that,” Bishop said.
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While FASTCrib has already provided powerful data and significant savings, Holz believes the full benefit is yet to come as the system is fully integrated over time.
Relationships matter
Safran and Fastenal’s successful partnership didn’t happen overnight. Like any good relationship, it developed with experience over time.
The result was trust.
“It’s very easy to have a good relationship with a supplier when everything is perfect,” Holz said of the partnership. “We saw a very strong and aggressive ramp-down of our activity, and this is where Fastenal has been able to keep going with continued support. This is how I describe a very good partnership – there is support during a bad time, but also support during a good time.”
"There are some good times. There are some bad times. But the Fastenal team has been here to support us in both situations." -- Arnaud Holz
As Safran’s production sharply increased again post-COVID, Bishop’s strategy was simple and straightforward: Fastenal comes in, carves out some space within Safran’s facility, and fills it with the workers and inventory needed to keep production running.
Things blossomed from there.
“I would say that it’s a true partnership based on the development we have done together,” said Holz. “At the beginning, we just started with some commercial purchasing, but right now, we are going more and more into proprietary parts, with more sharing of even confidential data between Fastenal and Safran Landing Systems. That’s not something we would have done at the very beginning of the relationship.”
Bishop concurs, calling their current relationship a “strategic partnership.”
“The trust was created across the entire relationship. We come in every day and we really show what continuous improvements are all about. They include us in production meetings. They have developed a sense of who we are as a supplier. I think if you ask them today, it’s really not ‘Fastenal is a supplier.’ It’s ‘Fastenal is a partner,’” Bishop added.
A bright future
With a strategic partnership and effective supply systems in place, Holz believes even greater opportunities are on the horizon. “Fastenal Onsite has been clearly identified as a best practice in terms of management of our procurement and purchasing, so what we are trying to do right now is spread a little bit of that. I’m pretty sure there are a lot of next steps and next successes to build between Safran and Fastenal for the future.” Bishop agrees. “We’ve stuck together, and we talked about loyalty. We’ve talked about commitment, and Safran and Fastenal have made that commitment together,” he said.
Whether in business or in life, our relationships hold us, sustain us, and inspire us. That’s certainly true in Safran and Fastenal’s case. Perhaps Holz said it best: “If I had to sum it up in one sentence – and this is the motto of Safran as well – this is ‘Powered by Trust.’"