Rolls-Royce Launches Global Metals Strategy

Engine-maker aims to redefine aerospace cost model, remove complexity from raw material supply chain with Newview solution

Engine-maker aims to redefine aerospace cost model, remove complexity from raw material supply chain with Newview solution

Fort Worth, TX — September 14, 2004 — The aerospace business of Rolls-Royce is using a new solution from Newview Technologies to deliver a new efficiency model to its multi-tier raw material supply chain as part of the company's global metals strategy.

Using Newview's Material Specification Management (MSM 4) solution, a joint Newview and Rolls-Royce team detailed sourced materials that account for a significant percent of an engine's cost. With visibility across their supply chain to these critical inputs, the team is able to organize Rolls-Royce total metals spend, identify opportunities to reduce the number of materials sourced throughout the company's extended supply chain and begin to reshape Rolls-Royce's material mix and supplier relationships.

"Like many industrial companies, materials represent a significant cost driver in our designs," said Peter H. Summerfield, Rolls-Royce global procurement director for materials. "With an increasing shift towards outsourced part manufacturing, it is imperative that we approach our sourcing decisions understanding the details behind our cost drivers and help to develop strategic supplier relationships that demonstrate supply chain thought-leadership in operational processes and commercial practices."

Newview said that MSM 4 was designed to meet the needs of today's manufacturers of highly engineered products. With an increasing shift towards outsourced part manufacturing, companies that once controlled material decisions now operate in a challenging environment where decisions are distributed throughout the extended supply chain. The resulting fragmentation of purchasing power and proliferation of material specifications makes it difficult to control the material cost as a component of the total part price. Newview said that MSM 4 addresses this challenge by providing a coordinated view of a critical data, allowing design engineers and part commodity managers to coordinate efficient design and sourcing decisions consistent with a total cost management approach.

"Today detailed material data [are] managed in multiple systems, documents and engineering drawings, making it difficult to affect part costs deep in the supply chain," said Paul Strzelec, Newview's marketing and strategy executive. "MSM 4 was [designed] to coordinate design-to-buy decisions that allow companies operating in outsourced manufacturing environments to deliver the most efficient cost model possible."

According to Newview, features and capabilities of MSM 4 include:

  • Structured Repository and Parametric Search: A single location for storing detailed material data and related part and commercial data. Intelligent search capability provides retrieval of information for business users across functions.

  • Comparison Views and Commonization Profiles: A highly attributed data model allows users to build material views that compare/contrast similarities against a set of target materials.

  • Material Reuse Alerts: Alert design engineers of pre-approved materials before costlier alternatives are selected in a design.

  • Collaborative Material Management: A framework for communicating material decisions throughout the extended supply chain.

  • Configurable Architecture: Built on Newview's Network Business Process Architecture, allowing for integration of material data and processes with Newview's Coordinated Network Procurement (CNP), and other systems such as product lifecycle management and enterprise resource planning (ERP).
By leveraging Newview's solutions, Rolls-Royce is helping Newview configure the MSM 4 solution to standardize key processes for the aerospace industry. Together, Rolls-Royce and Newview intend to work with a group of strategic suppliers and customers to conduct "joint commonization initiatives" aimed at optimizing material design and sourcing decisions across a full range of aerospace programs, including the new Trent 1000 engine that will be used on the Boeing 7E7 Dreamliner.

"It's exciting to participate in this important transformation in the Aerospace industry," Strzelec. "By organizing, planning and now [implementing] a global metals strategy, Rolls-Royce is demonstrating the design and cost leadership that will create value for airline customers and strategic suppliers well into the future."
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