On a flight path to success

In a climate where the pressure to implement new processes and technologies is a constant consideration, sustainability has rightfully taken centre stage for those companies and organisations wanting to work in the aerospace sector. Not surprisingly, this increased focus also brings with it many challenges.

Implementing a green supply chain, bringing innovation into products where size, weight and power are key, driving continuous improvement, building complementary cross-functional teams and understanding the many other issues faced by the sector as it competes on a global stage, are just a few of these.

For Birmingham-based cable assemblies, integrated products and logistics services provider, CHH CoNeX, considering the key milestones around entering this market resulted in the company being awarded its AS9100 international aerospace industry certification within just three months – half the time it normally takes manufacturers to reach the demanding standard.

CHH CoNeX has also become a signatory of SC21, the UK industry's ground-breaking supply chain excellence programme which enables OEMs to procure products with confidence from anywhere in the world. CHH CoNeX is now looking at achieving a silver award this year.

However, reaching these important milestones required a strong re-emphasis on improving efficiencies and performance throughout the business which coincided with the company announcing a major growth strategy to increase the company's turnover to over £20 million by 2013.

CHH CoNeX also continues to invest significantly in attracting new, skilled people to the team in order to develop best practice processes - many of whom already have aerospace sector experience.

“Our strategy is to continually add value and minimise waste, thereby becoming a true extension of our customers' business,” states CHH CoNeX's managing director, Tim Hughes. “To date CHH CoNeX has successfully enabled customers to reduce density and weight in interconnect solutions, thereby providing efficient cable management and routing services. CHH CoNeX also has an excellent reputation for the delivery of bespoke products where reliability and zero defects are paramount, and all within a lean and green supply chain.”

Having achieved AS9100, CHH CoNeX now considers itself a certified supplier which operates to the world-class standards of the aerospace industry and relies on a robust quality management system.

Shaun Ashmead, operations director explains: “As a member of the Midlands Aerospace Alliance (MAA), and the General Dynamics SC21 cluster in the West Midlands, CHH CoNeX is committed to SC21 and to continuing to achieve sustainable improvements in performance that can be measured across the supply chain.

“Member companies have agreed to implement four strands of development and performance processes: sustainable improvement, performance metrics, improvement framework and recognition. All of these four areas must be addressed in order to achieve improvement throughout the supply chain.

“Our aim is to continue building on our strong industry track record and reputation for providing quality-assured products, services and solutions at the optimum total cost of acquisition. This strategy is geared at applications across a wide range of industries including aerospace and defence.”

CHH CoNeX has also recently introduced a new team tasked with further integrating overall product design and development processes within the company's business strategy.

The New Product Introduction (NPI) team will also look to ensure that customer products are seamlessly transitioned into the business in an efficient, cost-effective way, ensuring that the cross-functional teams collaborate with the goal of meeting customers' delivery and quality demands.

The renewed focus on NPI will be aligned with existing best practice processes to improve manufacturability and reduce risk whilst exceeding customer requirements.

www.chhconex.com