Yeovil-based supply chain consultancy achieves average 99.99% for quality and delivery, unprecedented in the aerospace sector’s SC21 programme.
Trade organisation A|D|S has announced that the first ever Supply Chains in the Twenty First Century (SC21) Gold Award has been won by Wincanton at its Houndstone site, near Yeovil in Somerset.
The award was presented today at the SC21 National Task Force meeting in Belfast. Attended by over 150 people from the UK aerospace and defence industry, the event also hosted three companies from Northern Ireland who won bronze SC21 awards.
The Houndstone site, operated on behalf of AgustaWestland, employs 75 people who were both nominated and supported for this award by their main customer. Wincanton employs 28,000 people globally.
The SC21 programme examines supply chain improvement and aims to accelerate the competitiveness of the UK aerospace and defence industry. The UK is number one in Europe and second only to the US globally in aerospace and defence. SC21 is a crucial part of the work being done by aerospace companies to improve their visibility and competitiveness, says A|D|S, the UK’s aerospace, defence and security trade organisation. SC21 was launched at the Farnborough International Airshow in 2006 and currently has over 580 industry signatories with involvement from companies of all sizes as well as the UK Ministry of Defence.
To achieve an SC21 award a company must demonstrate world class business performance in all aspects including delivery and services to customers, in internal business efficiency and furthermore a continuous sustainable improvement culture throughout the organisation. Wincanton achieved 99.98% performance in quality and 100%in delivery through a 12 month performance period on over 150,000 deliveries. Other performance criteria include business excellence and manufacturing excellence and all have to hit gold level standard to win a gold award. Otherwise the award defaults to the lowest score in these criteria.
“To achieve such a high performance on more than 150,000 deliveries over the course of a whole year demonstrates a strong business improvement culture and a commitment from all at the company to excellence,” said chairman of A|D|S Ian Godden. “The constant improvement of the supply chain in our industries is crucial to retaining the UK’s world-leading position and examples such as Wincanton will be invaluable in showing others the way forward.”
Wincanton’s defence director Ross Bannerman said: “I am absolutely delighted that Wincanton has won this award, and particularly proud of our dedicated defence team at Houndstone who have shown such commitment to our culture of continuous improvement. Special thanks also to our customer, AgustaWestland, who both nominated and supported us throughout the process. Wincanton is now rolling out the SC21 programme across its defence sites in the UK.”
Procurement manager at AgustaWestland, Colin Turner, said: “The pressures of the global economy means that only by improving supply chain performance, using a common sense approach like SC21, will UK aerospace companies continue to deliver world class products in an increasingly competitive market.
“AgustaWestland is sure that this is first of many gold awards for the SC21 programme and we congratulate all members of the SC21 teams at Wincanton, AgustaWestland and A|D|S on this award.”
