Logistics: a vital link for Airbus

Last August, Airbus reaffirmed its goal of increasing commercial aircraft production this year and in the years ahead. The aircraft manufacturer is still targeting total deliveries of 720 aircraft in 2023, based on the 381 deliveries already completed in the first seven months of the year. To meet its delivery deadlines with airlines, Airbus relies on flawless, meticulously organized logistics to supply the assembly lines at its plants in France and Germany just in time. In France as well as in the United States, the European aerospace group has entrusted its inbound logistics to Daher, an industrial logistics specialist that positions itself as the European leader in aerospace logistics.  

In fact, the provider manages the supply chain for the various parts, structural components and aircraft modules required to build commercial aircraft such as the A220 and the A320, A330 and A350 families, in the aircraft manufacturer’s own warehouses. “Airbus’s logistics organization is structured around platforms located either at its production sites, each of which is specialized, or a few kilometers away,” says Aymeric Daher, Deputy Director of the Logistics division at the eponymous company. At Airbus Atlantic’s nearby warehouses in Montoir-de-Bretagne, Daher handles all small and medium-sized composite and aluminum structural parts from a myriad of suppliers, as well as fuselage modules transported to the plants in Toulouse and Hamburg. The provider delivers the same logistics service for large aeronautical components through the same network of warehouses near Airbus’s plants in Toulouse (Haute-Garonne).  

The challenge for Daher is managing the supply of parts coming from the cascade of thousands of suppliers. “The issue is to cushion industrial disruptions and major fluctuations in parts supply, and to adapt to them in real time. For example, this means managing a change in the volume of parts from one day to the next. A supply delay the day before results in excess volume the following day. And if parts are unavailable, once we receive them, we operate an expedited flow to move them directly onto Airbus’s production line,” explains Aymeric Daher. To do this, the provider employs “storage intelligence” and monitors performance down to the individual part, as closely as possible to its customer’s expectations. This monitoring takes place at every stage of the logistics process, from receiving parts to delivering them to Airbus, including storage and picking to prepare orders. Each milestone in the process is checked physically and digitally using high-performance digital tools (such as SAP’s latest warehouse management software, a type of tool that tells operators which stock items to pick for an order), enabling it to control and optimize supply flows and absorb industrial supply disruptions.  

“In particular, we work on engineering the management of parts in the warehouse receiving area, which gives us full traceability for each of them thanks to our digital tools connected upstream and downstream to Airbus’s information system,” he adds. Daher even automates picking in certain Airbus warehouses, including one in Saint-Nazaire, using an automated storage system that stores small parts on shelves, places them in bins and then onto conveyors, where operators collect them. “We also use artificial intelligence tools connected to sensors which, depending on the weather outside, staffing peaks and door openings, among other factors, optimize the warehouse’s energy consumption. At the Saint-Nazaire logistics platform, we have reduced energy consumption by 10% to 15%,” Aymeric Daher notes.