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(L-R) AMA's vice president business development, Mark Brown, Sunshine Metals, vice-president and general manager, Marc MacDuff, PASU's general manager, John Olson.[/caption]
Globally-focused aerospace metals organisation, Aero Metals Alliance (AMA), took to the last Farnborough Airshow to explain the close collaboration between its Group members. Mike Richardson reports.
The five leading aerospace metals distribution businesses of Gould Alloys, Service Centres Aero, Progressive Alloy Steels Unlimited (PASU), Sunshine Metals and Wilsons comprise the Group members of Aero Metals Alliance (AMA), an organisation created to meet the demands of the global aerospace manufacturing industry.
AMA provides a structure enabling a pooling of resources and technical know-how, covering the entire range of customer requirements, through a coordinated effort with worldwide reach. The goal is to provide a virtual one-stop shopping model to focus on customers who prefer to establish trading relationships with large international organisations. Each Alliance member has the opportunity to offer the products, skills, expertise and capabilities of the others, thereby strengthening each in their respective markets.
Sunshine Metals, based in Davisville, West Virginia is an aluminium supplier to the aerospace manufacturing supply chain. According to company vice-president and general manager, Marc MacDuff, what makes Sunshine Metals uniquely different to some of its competitors is its machining capabilities.
“We have 5-axis machining capability that exceeds 15ft in width and 40ft in length,” he begins. “We specialise in heavy machine removal and thick plate long aerostructure parts. We perform the usual tasks inside the normal distribution channel, as well as value-add which comprises around 70% of our business. We do more semi-finishing than complete finishing, preferring to remove the metal and reduce the scrap. We can do simple things for customers, like positioning holes, or more complex machining - and everything in between.
Progressions of power
Las Vegas-based Progressive Alloy Steels Unlimited (PASU) is a speciality metals distribution centre primarily focusing on the stainless steel, aircraft alloys, re-metalled alloys and either vacuum-melted or specially-melted products.
“We stock these in multiple forms, either round, flat, rectangle, large forged blocks or plate and we do all kinds of different processing in-house such as cutting,” states company general manager, John Olson. “We also perform near net shape machining that we process in-house, and a large amount of value-added work where we might complete certain operations in-house and then subcontract it out and perform some additional, more-specialised processes and then bring it in and do some other work to the parts. Primarily, we’re dealing with anything from small machine shops to large OEMs and we perform transactional, end or long-term agreement (LTA) work too.”
In terms of customer demands, Olson points to supplier reliability by stating that the company runs 99% or better on-time delivery with its customers - something he says that most of PASU’s competitors are unable to offer.
“Our competitors aren’t as flexible in terms of a customer wanting to bring forward the delivery date of their order. We’re extremely flexible, whereas our customers won’t have a lot of room for manoeuvre. The way the materials supply market is evolving, everyone is worried about cashflow, so they want their deliveries to arrive within a much tighter timeframe.”
AMA’s vice-president business development, Mark Brown reckons that the Alliance’s USP is about being an integrator and a bespoke service.
“We’re not delivering an ‘out of the box’ solution - we’re trying to listen to our customers and develop specific solutions for them,” he confirms. “It’s what the Alliance is really good at doing because we’re all individual businesses, but together we offer a bespoke service solution with the flexibility and the investment opportunity to bring something special to the customer, rather than just having an off-the-shelf solution or a corporate approach.
“Our customers are asking us to do a lot more to add value to their products. Much of this is driven by their production times, as well as increasing volumes of business. They want to free up their spindle times for core business activities, whilst we focus on the more basic metal removal activities.”
PASU is the newest member company to the Alliance, so how has its business changed since it became part of AMA? Olson believes the major change is down to extra muscle of financial backing.
“We have the access to really improve or move into a new world if we want to,” he affirms. “We can now approach the customer as a global business and if the business case is there, we can win it. Previously, there would be certain contracts that we wouldn’t be considered for because of the costs involved. As part of the Alliance, we can delve a little deeper and invest into growing whatever the product is that we are being asked to look at. Customers now tend to view us in a different way: as a global company whose sheer size looks impressive to them. There’s the comfort factor in our customers feeling they know we can handle any work they throw at us.”
It all adds up
I’m interested to learn more about the continuing rise of additive manufacturing which is increasingly vying for some of the supply of parts in different formats. According to AMA’s Brown, the long-term view with the pressure on buy-to-fly ratios will mean more additive manufacturing entering the industry.
“As far as the penetration of composite materials and additive manufacturing goes, the real game-changer may be on the next single aisle aircraft,” he concludes. “This may be the tipping point where composite materials provide a real threat to the traditional metals supply chain side. With the financial backing we enjoy, we will need to look at diversifying our own business. We’re not a design authority - so we don’t have any impact, but from a supply chain perspective, there is the additive powder metallurgy and wire supply business that could potentially look into growing in the future.”
So, there you have it – truly a business case where the sum of the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. By aggregating demand across a single supply chain on behalf of some of the world’s leading OEMs - whilst at the same time providing a truly responsive local service to meet the needs of individual subcontractors anywhere in the world - Aero Metals Alliance is living proof that together they are stronger!
