The company’s largest segment, Space and Airborne Systems (SAS), supports all areas of national security. Organised into four sectors – Space Systems, Airborne Combat Systems, Intelligence & Cyber and Mission Networks – SAS has a fully integrated supply chain team of professionals in subcontracts, procurement, material management and inventory & asset management.
Leading the supply chain function for SAS is Alex Niles, Vice President of Supply Chain at L3Harris. Alex joins us today to discuss supply chain innovation within the complex and rapidly changing aerospace and defence industry.
To begin, Alex explains how the company has built up its status as a ‘Trusted Disruptor’ – a term that encompasses its mission statement to innovate relentlessly and deliver capability with the speed, passion and determination that its customers demand.
“We are the Trusted Disruptor in this industry,” says Alex. “One of the things we always say that aligns directly with our supply chain strategy is that resiliency builds trust, and agility facilitates disruption.
“For that to work, we need to make sure that we have strong processes and partners throughout our supply chain, and that we have the infrastructure in place to quickly respond to the needs of our internal customers and end users. This all helps facilitate innovation.
“One of the things we’re really proud of right now is our work in AI and robotic process automation. We’ve been looking at the activities our teams have to undertake that may be manual in nature, but also highly repetitive, and training bots to take on these tasks. So we’re now on a journey to assess these tasks and automate them to improve our agility and speed and create more time for our teams to focus on higher-level, critical activities.
“We’re also prioritising our strong supplier partnerships. Like everyone, we learned a lot during the COVID-19 pandemic. During that time, we were most successful in the areas where we had our strongest partner relationships, and we’ve taken that lesson forward. Now, we’re looking at putting standardised processes in place so that we can establish our partnerships in a uniform way.
“For instance, in 2022 we held our first strategic supplier workshops. These were an intimate group of core suppliers that we brought in to talk about how we work together today, and how we want to work together in the future in terms of communication strategy as it relates to needs and roadmaps.
“These workshops have become the key communication outlet for us and our suppliers to get together in the same room and really talk about what’s ahead of us for the next two to three years. They’re an opportunity where our senior leaders can talk about what’s most important for us, and then we can get feedback from our suppliers and take action.
“What we said in our first workshop was that we didn’t just want to have one-sided presentations. Instead, we wanted to have round table discussions where we could explore our future as an equal partnership.
“I view our supply chains as an extension of our own teams. There are resources, there’s talent and there’s capability – and we want to leverage the resources on both sides to benefit the partnership.
“A notable partner for us is 35 Technologies Group – in terms of technology and road mapping, they’ve been very helpful in taking on certain capabilities that we need and partnering with us to deliver these new developments together and more quickly get them to the customer.
“Another partner in particular is Alexander Machine & Tool Company, LLC. (AMT), who are one of the machine suppliers we work with who are doing rapid prototyping for us. Amphenol is another one, where they’re understanding where the technology is going and understanding how to apply that technology into our specific circumstances, helping us accelerate some of our programme schedules. Finally, I’d like to mention Spectrum Control, who have been instrumental in helping us develop mission roadmaps to hone our product offering to ensure it’s to our customer’s specifications.”
As Alex explains, delivering on goals and customer specifications has never been more crucial. For Alex, a turbulent global landscape requires significant forward planning and an investment into the technologies that will shape the decade to come.
“Now more than ever, world events are creating a platform for innovation,” says Alex. “We’re working closely with our suppliers to better develop our technology roadmap for the future, so we can ensure that we’re supplying our customers with what they need day in and day out, while also anticipating their needs for the next ten years. We want to make sure that our suppliers are involved in that conversation, so that they know what we intend to provide and how they can help us reach that goal.
“This not only puts us a step ahead, but also puts our suppliers a step ahead, so that we’re able to work together and develop technology and solutions in a much more rapid way than if we were all trying to innovate separately.”
Alex notes how the development of new technologies – both internally and externally – is streamlining the way L3Harris approaches supply chain disruptions.
“The need for robotic process automation was amplified during the COVID-19 pandemic,” says Alex. “So we deployed the use of a supply chain mapping tool that allowed us to receive real-time intelligence on supply chain disruptions – whether that’s cyber or environmental.
“I’m based in Florida, and during the recent hurricanes we were able to get important information related to suppliers that may be in the path of a storm or further disruption with this tool, which helped us take action to mitigate and redirect.
“When you have supply chains that extend across the globe, you know that disruptions are always going to come up, so this tool is now a standard part of our Materials Requirements Planning (MRP). This has been really helpful for our teams, as we can more easily wrap our heads around what risks are out there and how we can assess those risk in a systematic way.
“We’ve also implemented some advanced planning and scheduling systems over the past couple of years that allow our teams to really partner with our customers and do some scenario planning for how we accelerate delivery schedules and more quickly field our products and solutions to support the end user.
“This has allowed our teams to do more complex industrial planning far more effectively than we would have been able to do in the past, when it would have been a much more manual process. I think this is one of the things that really sets L3Harris apart from our peers – we’re able to utilise technologies from third parties in a way many other companies can’t. Our heritage has given us the muscle to wield these IT resources in a different way.”
So, what does the future hold for L3Harris?
“Maintaining excellent quality and accelerating deliveries is going to be crucial for us long term,” shares Alex. “It supports our disruptive approach and gives us the agility to meet ever-increasing customer timelines. There is a need to deploy capabilities in the aerospace and defence sector faster, and we’re now able to see something go from a concept to being deployed within a year or two – making this an even more exciting industry to work in.
“We’re involved in so many domains – air, sea, land, space and cyber. We cover the full defence space, and we’ve really empowered our teams to take the best practices and solutions from any one of those domains and apply them to the other, whether that’s an actual technical product offering or an abstract process.
“The convergence of technical solutions and processes that’s happening right now is incredibly exciting, and it’s really accelerating how quickly we’re able to drive programmes forward, leverage teams in other areas and test out new approaches.”
Learn more about L3Harris here.
ADDED VALUE
“I love TED Talks,” says Alex. “I find a lot of value in them, whether I’m travelling or driving into the office, and I often use them as a part of my annual kickoff meetings with my staff. Our meetings usually have a theme, and these TED Talks help me frame them.
“We recently used Angela Lee Duckworth’s TED Talk Grit: The power of passion and perseverance. I think anyone who has chosen a career in supply chain understands that there’s a lot of passion in our function, and you have to persevere through the daily challenges that may occur as you try to sustain legacy supply chains.
“I’ve also read her book, Grit: Why passion and resilience are the secrets to success. I think this is a great read and really makes you challenge yourself – are you aligned with something that you’re passionate about, and are you willing to push yourself through difficult circumstances? You have to be, because that’s how you drive excellence in a company.”
Connect with Alex on LinkedIn.
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