Safran rallies its suppliers around its strategy

A friendly and studious atmosphere was evident in the Safran Campus auditorium on Thursday June 6, 2024. For the third year running, Safran invited its main suppliers to a Supplier Day. Following on from the 2023 edition held during the Paris Air Show, this year attendees met on the Safran Campus near the Vilgénis park in Massy. 

The aim of this event for Safran: rally its suppliers around its transformation objectives, especially decarbonization and operational excellence. By way of introduction, Safran CEO Olivier Andriès recalled that aviation safety remained the Group’s priority. An even more significant commitment in a backdrop marked by a ramp-up of activities in the aviation sector. Christophe Guéret (Group VP Quality & Performance) pointed out the importance of the APQP* approach and the Safety Management System to develop the culture of transparency in quality. François Bastin (CEO Safran Landing Systems) also stressed the importance of these transformations for the attractiveness of our industry.

Issues in raw materials procurement, recruitment, impacts of the health crisis and more. Marjolaine Grange (Group VP Industrial, Purchasing and Performance), Eric Froger (VP Purchasing Perfomance) and Jean-Noël Mahieu (Safran Electronics’ Vice President Operations) then discussed the main difficulties encountered by their suppliers before proposing solutions to overcome them. Amongst them was the new “One Safran baseline” risk assessment tool. 

Alongside this reference system, suppliers can also use the GIFAS-managed Aero Excellence program, introduced in 2023 with Airbus and Safran as sponsors. Its aim? Enable the aviation sector to be more competitive and resilient to handle the challenges it faces. To this end, Aero Excellence provides an assessment matrix based on 5 criteria: planning and logistics, supplier industrial management, industrialisation and quality, manufacturing excellence, organisation and resource management. By joining the program, suppliers can easily see their maturity level and their performance in these fields. 

Furthermore, the topics of cyber security and financial security - to which aviation sector suppliers are particularly exposed - were also discussed in a dedicated session. Boostaerospace presented its Air Cyber tool, which runs diagnostics and prepares an action plan to reach the Bronze level specified by Safran.

Sustainable development and decarbonization were treated to special attention during the second session of the event. Nathalie Stubler, Group Chief Sustainability Officer, presented the Group roadmap and commitments to suppliers, stressing their “key role” in achieving these objectives.  

The event was also the opportunity to introduce the partnership between Safran the IAEG (International Aerospace Environmental Group, of which Safran is a member), and ratings organization EcoVadis. The organization provides a solution used to assess supplier performance and their maturity level in terms of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues. To date, over 1,200 companies have used EcoVadis to assess their Supply Chain. 

This third annual Supplier Day ended with the “Decarbonization challenge”. This competition was introduced in 2023 to reward the best innovations in terms of decarbonization and 68 suppliers participated. Radiall, Senior and Schliger all received awards. The first was recognized for its innovative gold recycling system; the second for a wind turbine design; and Schliger for using a compressor to save energy. The awards were presented by Marjolaine Grange, Nathalie Stubler and Vincent Caro, who all expressed their pride in working with such proactive and innovative suppliers.

A week after holding a Supplier Performance Manager Day bringing together all those involved in Group supplier relationships, this latest edition of the Supplier Day demonstrates Safran’s intent to create sustainable, trusted relationships with its suppliers. 

*APQP: Advanced Product Quality Planning. A structured quality planning method covering the whole product life cycle, especially in the development and industrialization phases.