Silver award for AWS Group recognises SC21 leadership position

SC21 has been designed by the SBAC to accelerate the competitiveness of the UK’s aerospace and defence industry by raising the performance of its supply chains. It has three levels: bronze, silver and gold. AWS’ 12 months delivery performance to its sponsor, General Dynamics UK was above 99 per cent and quality was measured at 248 defects per million opportunities (DPMO). The company scored over 500 on its lean manufacturing and business excellence framework performance and the combined assessment means that AWS has been assessed as meriting a silver award. AWS has become the first company under SC21 to achieve this level – a truly significant achievement in under 12 months.

Comments CEO Paul Deehan: “I believe that successful companies are the ones that drive themselves - those who don’t sit back - and in particularly the ones who are pro-active in driving continuous improvement in operations across their own business and down into their own supply chain. We embrace and welcome initiatives such as SC21, because we know we can differentiate ourselves from the chasing pack. We are delighted and honoured to win this award and will be working hard to achieve Gold status in the near future.”
General Dynamics UK says it is encouraging that one of the first companies to receive an SC21 award was part of its implementation working group. In particular, Byron Clarke, who is the company’s champion for SC21 delivery commented: “The openness and the transparency that comes from the diagnostic means we have a clear framework in which to measure progress, it’s a win-win scenario; we all benefit from this initiative. In the AWS case the work we had already started with them migrated to SC21 and with our help they adapted very quickly to the SC21 process.”

SC21 Project Manager Phil Curnock said: “The SC21 change programme is now really beginning to take effect. We spent a lot of working with the primes to get a common set of processes and metrics in place. The silver award to AWS Electronics means this is now working at the operational level. This is a tremendous achievement and should now act as an inspiration to the hundreds of companies who are part of the SC21 programme.”