Marlog project: Eurocopter officially ends work on its ambitious program to optimize the Group’s logistics chain

Marignane, November 24, 2011

Eurocopter has inaugurated its new logistics platform at its industrial site in Marignane, marking the end to an innovative program to re-engineer the Group’s entire logistics chain and implement a flexible, high-performance tool. The investments made over the past two years to develop modern means will enable Eurocopter to reduce both logistics costs and delivery cycles, so that the company’s assembly lines, customers and industrial partners will all be receiving their parts much faster.

The program was launched two years ago with an ambitious goal: to reorganize the entire logistics chain based on two dedicated platforms. The incoming flows and industrial logistics have now been centralized at the plant in Marignane, while the outgoing flows and spare part deliveries have all been grouped together at a brand-new platform located close by at the Florides industrial park.

To ensure that its operators around the world could receive their spares in record time, Eurocopter worked together with its partners to build a new infrastructure, Eurocopter Global Logistic, in the Florides industrial park near the Marignane plant. The new logistics center, which opened its doors last June, boasts some impressive numbers: 53,500 square meters of floor space, an inventory of more than 1.5 million spare parts, and more than 300,000 parts shipped per year. The platform is now fully operational and houses all the Group’s logistics activities within a specially-designed unit offering 24/7 services.

In parallel, the industrial logistics chain was also reorganized, and the Marignane plant now manages all incoming flows and industrial logistics activities. Two automated warehouses have been set up that together have the capacity to store a total of 180,000 parts—a first in Europe.

“When we undertook this huge project to overhaul our logistics chain, our biggest challenge was to keep providing our customers with the same high levels of services—plus we couldn’t allow our work to have any impact on the production lines,” explained Joseph Saporito, Executive Vice President of the Global Supply Chain at the Eurocopter Group. “We completed the job right on schedule, and are already beginning to reap the benefits in terms of customer satisfaction and competitiveness. The key to our success was excellent teamwork—between the different sectors here at Eurocopter, and also with our long-time partner Daher.”

It should not be long before the bold decision taken two years ago in a difficult economic context pays off. The new infrastructures integrate the most modern flow management tools and processes available, and Eurocopter now has everything at its disposal to attain three major goals: to improve customer service, provide its industrial lines with new just-in-time delivery services, and create new production areas at the plant by centralizing activities to free up space.