Nineteen of Leonardo’s key suppliers were involved in wave 2 of the Leonardo Digital Supply Chain project, developed with the support of Confindustria’s Digital Innovation Hubs, which aims to accelerate the digital transformation and cyber security of Leonardo’s supply chain. A total of 50 suppliers with an overall turnover of EUR 900 million and a total of 4,500 employees have participated in the programme since its launch in February 2020.
The Leonardo Digital Supply Chain project is part of the LEAP (Leonardo Empowering Advanced Partnerships) programme, Leonardo’s innovative supplier management model developed to create the best conditions for enhancing its partners’ capabilities and technological excellence. “In 2021, the programme evolved to respond to new market challenges, further increasing its ambitions in terms of the supply chain’s digital transformation, cyber security and green transition,” stated Giacinto Carullo, Chief Procurement & Supply Chain Officer at Leonardo.
One of LEAP’s strategic goals is to “leverage new technologies to create a ‘collaborative digital ecosystem’ that accelerates the development of new products, improving the synchronisation of operations along the supply chain and the services offered to customers,” added Paolo Rostirolla, in charge of VP Supplier Sustainability & Development at Leonardo.
To achieve this, Leonardo has found an important partner in Confindustria’s DIH network, which has focused its mission on supporting the digital transformation of SMEs in strategic supply chains.
The DIHs of Lombardy, Piedmont, Liguria, Lazio, Umbria and Campania, in coordination with Leonardo’s Supplier Sustainability & Development unit, developed and implemented the digital maturity assessments and development guidelines.
The analysis was conducted using Test 4.0, a tool used and shared by Confindustria’s entire DIH network, which takes into consideration four parameters (technologies / execution / control / organisation) and eight macro processes (R&D, Production, Quality, Maintenance, Marketing, Logistics, Supply Chain, HR). Specific supply chain related questions were added to this tool, providing a further, consolidated overview of the target situation.
The results were presented during the ‘Leonardo Digital Supply Chain’ workshop held in Milan at the MADE Competence Centre 4.0 to highlight strengths and needs for improvement, share successful supply chain applications, and check actual use cases - such as those presented by the suppliers Ar.ter, Sitep Italia, ALA and O.M.P.M. - through the MADE Competence Centre demonstrators.
The workshop sought to illustrate concretely how digital technologies can optimise every business process and how it is essential to share/transfer data between the various business functions to create a strategic analysis and decision-making tool. These benefits are amplified when this same information is shared with customers and their supply chain, creating a digitally-integrated ecosystem that is more responsive and competitive overall.
The 50 suppliers in the Leonardo supply chain achieved a high overall score. The ratings for Leonardo’s supply chain companies are higher than the national average for all the ‘parameters’ and ‘macro processes’ analysed, if compared with the results of the total of over 1400 companies and a qualified sample of over 300 companies in the Aerospace, Air-Railway-Tramway and Mechatronics sectors that conducted the digital maturity assessment through Confindustria’s national DIH network.
In particular, the areas of quality, production and R&D are especially advanced, with values well above the national average, reflecting the special attention that the Aerospace & Defence sector devotes to these aspects. Logistics, maintenance, human resources and sales are the areas where the most significant opportunities for improvement have emerged.
The companies also conducted a cyber security assessment created by Leonardo, which showed a medium initial risk level, with a significant variance in scores between companies. Six main lines of action were defined that all suppliers will have to implement quickly in order to reduce risk.
