The global approach to material supply

Ed Hill hears from thyssenkrupp Aerospace’s CEO Patrick Marous about the company’s approach to supplying materials for the demanding aerospace manufacturing market.

Patrick Marous, CEO of thyssenkrupp Aerospace, has a long fascination with the aerospace industry ever since he attended a space camp organised by the French astronaut Patrick Baudry as a teenager.

Now he heads up one of the industry’s most important material and supply chain service providers with a global footprint that encompasses 44 locations in 20 countries and a workforce of more than 2,000. thyssenkrupp Aerospace supplies many companies in the sector, from major OEMs down to Tier 3 companies with metals ranging from aluminium to the most advanced alloys.

“We have a deep understanding of the aerospace industry and its requirements and that’s what makes us a preferred partner for our customers,” he begins. “We can build customer-specific control tower solutions and effectively take-over the complete management of the raw material supply chain for them, or merely provide materials such as aluminium, titanium, steels and others out of our dedicated warehouses.”

In such a regulated industry as aerospace thyssenkrupp’s customers have to source their materials from a supplier who they can trust, perform reliably but also have a deep-rooted understanding of their properties and applications.

“Availability, quality and costs are the main drivers. In order to sustainably manage this ‘magic triangle’ for our customers, we constantly invest into three things: our people and their skills; our organisational capabilities and in our systems,” Marous affirms.

Increasing the offer

Over the years there has been a growing trend in the aerospace industry that has seen a move away from suppliers just providing the basic raw materials to more semi-processed parts and this means companies like thyssenkrupp have to increase their engineering capabilities.

Its services include: pre-machining, drilling, roughing and surface milling, plate cutting, near-net shape, sheet guillotining, profiling, and PVC coating, bar cutting and chamfering, tube cutting, deburring and washing, and waterjet cutting.

“Our customers definitely ask for more semi-processed parts and we nowadays rarely sell metals in their full size/raw material stage,” Marous explains. “We usually saw, cut to size or waterjet the materials and because we bundle the demand of our customers, we can, for example, nest various parts into one full-size plate, thereby reducing scrap and increasing metal utilisation. This is a great benefit for our customers.

“We also have engineering and 3 and 5-axis CNC machining capabilities in some of our locations and in some cases even do sub-assembly of some structural airframe parts.”

Particularly in the civil sector, the aerospace industry is facing huge demand for new aircraft so thyssenkrupp Aerospace has had to implement new processes in order to keep up with demand for the advanced alloys that the industry consumes.

“The lead-times for certain materials like titanium or aluminium-lithium are very long and the aerospace supply chain is currently under pressure in certain areas,” Marous says. “However, as we manage our inventory and the inventory of our customers according to their forecasts, supported by our replenishment algorithms, we ensure availability and avoid stock-out situations. In many cases we have agreed minimum On Time Delivery Key Performance Indicators (OTD/KPI) with our customers and are incentivised to overperform them.”

The metallic future

It has been suggested that with the introduction of more composite materials used for structures such as wings and fuselages, the role of metals will gradually diminish in aircraft manufacturing but Marous is confident that they still have a long and important part to play in the manufacture and development of aircraft.

“Carbon fibres/composites are increasingly being used in the industry and we are definitely now below the peak levels in the use of materials like aluminium for wings, for example. However, metals will continue to play an important role and producers will continue to work on new lightweight alloys. Also, don’t forget that even though composites are replacing aluminium in certain areas of the aircraft, their introduction also increases the use of other metals such as titanium.”

Like many industries aerospace is facing the introduction of disruptive technologies such as additive manufacturing that use metal powders to build components layer by layer, so how is thyssenkrupp adapting to this new manufacturing environment?

“I do not foresee a major impact of additive manufacturing on the materials we currently supply for the serial production of airframes and components for the next few years,” Marous states. “But it can definitely play a role in certain critical components or in the MRO business.

“thyssenkrupp has actually invested in additive manufacturing and we would be more than happy to support some of our aerospace customers in the re-engineering of certain parts. We are also sourcing and supplying powders within our group, however this is not yet for the aerospace industry, so I see growth potential there.”

thyssenkrupp Aerospace recently opened a new facility in Morocco so it could be closer to its customers in North Africa. The opening is all part of the company’s global outlook which continues to serve new and emerging markets.

Marous says: “One of our big advantages is our global footprint. We guarantee standardised processes and aerospace certifications on a worldwide basis. And we follow our customers, so Morocco – after Tunisia – was a logical expansion of our network as more and more (especially French) companies have invested into the country. We also entered India five years ago as a first entrant in the materials and supply chain services sector and are very well established in the market. We are now investigating whether we should strengthen our capabilities there.

According to Marous, as the role of the material supplier moves from simply being a stockholder to a much more comprehensive service provider, thyssenkrupp is well placed to grow in the market. And this also means embracing modern manufacturing concepts such as Industry 4.0.

He concludes: “I am actually very optimistic about the future aerospace market for thyssenkrupp, especially in the materials and supply chain services sector. The magic triangle I mentioned previously is more and more difficult to manage and many companies therefore want to focus on their core competencies. This is why they want to partner with, and outsource, some of their non-core activities to us. This also means that we need to invest in transforming our business model and get more digital and more connected with our customers in order to reduce and automate transactions and the costs associated with those. This is why we call our business transformation ‘Materials as a Service’.”

www.thyssenkrupp-aerospace.com