Earlier this month, NHBB held its ninth annual Supplier Summit in Laconia, NH at the Lake Opechee Inn and Spa Conference Center. In attendance were more than 130 individuals from 73 service, manufacturing, and distribution companies that supply NHBB with everything from castings, lubricants, steel, and coatings to MRO goods like abrasives, cleaning agents, and tooling.
The theme of this year's Summit was "Getting to Gold," which was chosen to emphasize NHBB's objective of building a world class integrated supply chain and to encourage the supply-base to continue raising their performance levels in order to fully support the quality, delivery, cost, and service requirements of NHBB's customers.
In his opening remarks, NHBB's president Gary Yomantas spoke of how stringent these requirements have become. "In the global aerospace market, the bar for supplier performance is constantly being raised," said Yomantas. "It has reached a point where zero quality escapes is a prerequisite to earning more business and you could be held accountable, financially, if you fall short."
In addition to highlighting the increasingly strict requirements of its customers, NHBB shared its plans for optimizing and integrating the supply-base. Some of the steps NHBB is taking include standardizing supplier performance metrics, conducting quarterly supplier performance reviews, and assisting suppliers with Kaizen continuous improvement initiatives.
NHBB is also planning to hire a corporate-level senior quality engineer, who will be responsible for driving the standardization of best practices throughout NHBB and coordinating quality assessment activities on behalf of all three NHBB divisions.
At the end of its presentation, NHBB outlined its updated supplier performance standards. At a minimum, NHBB
Product Model | Inside Diameter | Outside Diameter | Thickness |
09067/09195 NACHI | 19.05 | 49.225 | 19.05 |
H-09067/H-09195 NACHI | 19.05 | 49.225 | 19.05 |