The convergence of methods is also evident

Like banks, automotive and aeronautics benefited from massive support in the State. Because all industries building on the French territory of automobiles, trucks, planes, boats, trains, or even cycles that they are under the control of French or foreign capital remain valuable inputs to the industrial fabric, employment, development of the territory or international trade. These comets of the French industry aggregate and want a tingling OEMs, suppliers in other industries, Cascade, and in particular subcontractors logistical operators and transport.

"All these industries have in common to integrators and crafts," points out Frédéric Hendrick, President of the French Association for logistics (Aslog). One of their key functions is to focus, at the right tempo, thousands of parts, assemblies, and subassemblies to finally produce rolling stock, navigating or steering wheel sets. "The functioning of their"supply chains", complex and multiple floors, is an essential element of their business, because one piece missing a probability which increases with the extent of the string and the number of suppliers is enough to stop the production", says Frederick Hendrick.

Pascal Eymery, whose only title Vice President logistics and "supply chain" Airbus is an index of the strategic importance of the function, says in the same way: "our ability to manage flows is at the heart of our business to Integrator." Manufacture aircraft is whether parts of nature and provenance very synchronously set various at very high rates, with a good quality and reliability and in a context of frequent changes in technology. And the supply chain is more intercontinental. In addition, aircraft are very custom, if it was still the same plane, it would be easy. "Without minimizing the technology and engineering, our business could therefore not achieve excellence without a good logistics", said Pascal Eymery.

Convergence of methods

For efficiency, most manufacturers now share their "supply chain" management with specialists and to have sometimes outsourced in part to the cockpit. The convergence of methods is also evident. For example, all use the just-in-time or the "kanban" which is a continuous supply by the edges of lines connected or grouping of units of suppliers around the Assembly plants.

But the commonalities between all these industries of individual or collective transport stop there. Each has its peculiarities. "The first difference is one of the volumes," said Frederick Hendrick. The time between two cars and two trucks leaving at the end of string account in minutes while there in days for planes or trains and in months or years for ships. In a warehouse up plants, 15 to 20 parts trucks come each day in a car manufacturer against only 1 or 2 at a railway Builder. Denis Debacker said that "in the car, the management of the"supply chain"is monolithic with massive, global, rhythmic, streams square".

Aeronautical channels are more heterogeneous, "flows are lower and more timely. Very small quantities or transported individual parts (10 parts, 100 special rivets...), "it is impossible to apply the methods of depersonalisation of the automobile to Aeronautics", says François Lepinoy, President of the pole Daher Socata. "Some new incoming service providers, said, have been struggling to understand this problem. Similarly, the pooling of transport between several suppliers there is virtually impossible because each addresses different tense flow constraints.

Another difference, the car responds to a logic of "custom made", i.e. product designed with variants and differential execution. In contrast, rail or aviation that meet "custom designed" logic, differentiation is by design. But even in the "custom made", the management of a string of trucks is more complex than a car production line, explains Michel Brown, logistics Director of Renault Trucks (Volvo Group). The same model catalogue may contain up to 800 variants and "the chance to get two identical trucks on the same day is virtually zero."

Inventory management

The manufacture of scooters in Peugeot motorcycles, which may resemble production cars, also meets its own logic: "tense flows are very difficult in two-wheelers because suppliers and volumes are too small," said Vincent Jomier, Chief Financial Officer. Even if it seeks to reduce its stocks to a minimum, Peugeot motorcycles is forced to hold intermediate stocks of fifteen to thirty days. For purchases in Asia, it must even anticipate at least four months in advance to take into account the duration and the vagaries of maritime transport and Asian suppliers.

Yet all these industrialists who want to compress their stocks need minimum buffer, but not for the same reasons. Automotive receives continuous orders a few weeks or a few days before filing and custody of stocks of coins, counted in days, to absorb fluctuations in quantities and especially mix. In aviation or rail, firm commands horizon lies between eighteen and thirty-six months and stocks, counted in months, mainly meet securing flows because of the remoteness and risk vendors.

Pascal Eymery of Airbus admits that Aeronautics resumed some methods of automobile but by adapting because of differences in size, complexity (there are more parts and personalization in a plane) and manufacturing delays (several months for an aircraft against twenty-four hours for a car). Aviation Logistics in particular is characterized by a unit cost of parts and components high (sometimes several hundreds of thousands of euros) which is more easily support an airline.