To address the challenges that OEMs face, a rigorous and integrated approach to assess and confirm suppliers’ readiness and capabilities is essential. Accenture works with A&D companies to create a comprehensive and sustainable approach to supply chain risk management. This includes using standardized assessment categories and defined benchmarks for supplier maturity and readiness. We conduct ‘as-is’ assessment for every site and supplier (including those at lower tiers) and use those to tailor a development plan to confirm each supplier is able to meet future requirements as they change and programs ramp up. Development plans are constantly monitored – including thorough on-site visits –and sanctions for non-compliance are defined and agreed.
Our approach to driving program profitability covers three key phases.
First, we diagnose by identifying and prioritizing improvement opportunities, define the business case for change and implement the roadmap to achieve the identified outcomes. During this three-to-six week phase we use a range of proprietary tools to identify the areas with the greatest scope for improvement, including program lifecycle and value tree frameworks, opportunity assessments, business case and prioritization examples.
Having diagnosed the opportunities, we move into deploy mode in order to help the client capture and realize the benefits. This activity takes place in two stages: the implementation of quick wins over a four-to-twelve week period and working on longer term capabilities, such as changes to the operating model, processes, organization or technology over three-to-six months. With changes underway we then create and apply metrics to measure performance over a two-month period to confirm that the enhanced capabilities and profit improvements in place are continuing to deliver.
On the journey to high performance, Accenture stands ready to help—with a value-driven methodology and robust tools that can be deployed today to help companies rapidly identify and capture new profit improvement opportunities.