Sabritec is pleased to announce that we have partnered with SEA, the Supplier Excellence Alliance to help us improve on time delivery, improve quality, and reduce costs.

SEA is an association of leading aerospace, defense and space prime contractors whose purpose is to develop the capabilities of their supplier companies. SEA is implementing a common industry-wide Lean Enterprise System adopted by the top twenty primes in our industry.

The goal of SEA is to create a unified vision and a collaborative industry-wide approach to supplier development that eliminates duplication and aligns existing resources. It uses a common approach to lean production and customizes it to each supplier’s needs.

Some members include: BAE, Boeing, Bombardier, Honeywell, L-3, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Rockwell Collins, Sikorsky, General Dynamics and many more. Sabritec will complete Phase one by mid August. This phase consists of stabilizing supplier production and quality systems in leadership, process management, jobs skills and Kaizen (implement flow manufacturing). The SEA program focuses on three areas of improvement:

Leadership & Culture

• Champion for lean production to ensure senior management involvement
• Assign process owners for each critical process to deploy employee involvement
• Achieve balanced scorecard to deploy key measures
• Develop a Process Maturity Model to focus management systems on process maturity
• Implement reward, recognition, and move decision-making downward

Workforce Development

• Job skills certification to reduce variation
• Cross-training to promote flexible workforce and to support cells and mixed model production
• Team problem-solving and decision-making to support a fast, flexible, self-managing workforce

Operational Excellence

• Standard work to reduce variation
• Advanced flow manufacturing and pull systems to reduce cycle time and inventory
• Rapid changeover to increase flexibility and one piece flow
• Visual factory/5S to increase efficiency and pride of ownership
• Total Productive Maintenance to reduce downtime

For more information about SEA visit www.seaonline.org.