According to David Graddy, IT Business Analyst at Spirit AeroSystems, the company has undergone significant growth over the past 15 years and is now one of the largest manufacturers of aerostructures for commercial airplanes, defense platforms, and business jets worldwide. Since its establishment in 2006, the company has expanded its operations to include manufacturing for Airbus and regional business and corporate jets. In 2014, Spirit AeroSystems diversified its services by entering the defense industry, and in the last three years, it has further expanded into the aftermarket business. To continue diversifying its business, Spirit AeroSystems has recently restructured its organization and plans to focus on key areas such as the recovery of narrow-body aircrafts, the introduction of more affordable space systems to the market, and partnering with Airbus to develop the wings of CityAirbus NextGen—an all-electric VTOL multicopter.
Business handling made easy
Spirit AeroSystems is recognized worldwide for its consistent delivery of successful large-scale projects. In order to continue scaling its services and achieve its growth objectives, the company sought to upgrade its project management tools. Charlene Randall, EVM Specialist and Senior Business Analyst at Spirit AeroSystems, explains that the legacy project management tool previously used by the company did not provide sufficient capacity for growth, resulting in server capacity and performance issues. Additionally, the team encountered problems such as incorrect value logs and frequent data anomalies. To address these challenges, Charlene and her team collaborated with Deltek to determine their project management requirements and identified three suitable solutions – Deltek Cobra, PM Compass, and Acumen Fuse. Spirit AeroSystems now utilizes Deltek Cobra for cost management and reporting, while PM Compass ensures a complete audit trail of organizational changes. David Graddy notes that the new tools have significantly increased the company’s effectiveness in managing, reporting, and tracking all of its data, which was not possible with the previous tool.
A transparent record of all activities and changes made throughout the organisation for auditing purposes.
One of the key advantages of Deltek’s PPM suite of tools for Spirit AeroSystems is the ability to gain a clear and comprehensive view of data across the organization. As Charlene Randall explains, the project management solutions enable the company to maintain accountability and traceability throughout the business, with workflows providing visibility into any changes made to documentation, when they were made, and who made them. The dashboards in turn provide program and control account managers with numerous templates to generate reports. The reports are now more reliable due to consistently up-to-date data, which allows Spirit AeroSystems teams to make more informed and accurate decisions. With the new tools, Charlene notes that the company is no longer working with outdated reports from a week ago, but has access to real-time data. As Spirit AeroSystems continues to grow with Deltek’s tools, Charlene looks forward to expanding her knowledge and skills.
Uniform procedures and practices
Through the integration of Deltek’s Cobra and PM Compass solutions, Spirit AeroSystems has established a higher level of uniformity and consistency throughout its operations. This consistency enables the company to manage programs more efficiently, irrespective of who is involved in a particular project. As per Charlene, this has enabled the company to comply with customer requirements more easily, with analysts being able to transition from one program to another smoothly. The result of this improved effectiveness is that the company has greater potential for growth, with no limitations on the number or scale of programs it can undertake. Additionally, it enables Spirit AeroSystems to seamlessly fulfil reporting requirements.
Spirit AeroSystems has seen great success with Deltek’s PPM suite of tools, and is continuing to expand their usage across the organisation. With tools like Cobra, PM Compass, and Open Plan, they have been able to streamline project management, create greater standardization, and gain clearer insights into their data. By integrating scheduling with PM Compass and Cobra, they will have an even more comprehensive view of their projects, and be able to make more informed decisions as they continue to grow. It will be interesting to see how the commercial division of the company can also benefit from these tools, and how Spirit AeroSystems will continue to use Deltek’s solutions to scale their services even further.
