Aerospace Consulting Report on Airbus Military A400M

The Airbus Military Company was awarded a contract to design and deliver the A400M transport needed to improve the military airlift capability of several European nations. A contract signed with OCCAR, the European procurement agency representing the European nations, slipped badly when the aircraft engine was not on time. The control software developers for the engine did not deliver because a C-130 engine test bed was not available and this exposed the prime contractors to a loss of 1 billion Euros. Clearly, a problem had occurred in the supply chain design and implementation. The design of the supply chain and details of procurement were flawed. In addition, efforts to try to implement the supply chain arrangement in a cooperative manner for burden sharing were lacking, despite the execution of a leading edge technology project with considerable uncertainty. This report presents an examination of the supply chain and procurement issues related to the Airbus Military Company and the A400M project