Empack: Tell us, after more than 16 years of professional career within the Airbus Group, what do you think are the biggest differences/challenges that the group has faced in the logistics field if you look back in this professional career?

Nacho: Looking back, during all this time, the change has been, and is being enormous, in a process in which logistics has gone from being considered as NON CORE in the Airbus business, to having a capital importance and being part of the Airbus CORE, because of our own manufacturing process.

We have gone from having a fully delegated logistics, based on external systems and external to the company, mainly reactive and without real control of the data, to a model of ownership of the data and of all the systems in use in the logistics flow.

Within the Digital Logistics Transformation strategy, owning systems that generate quality data is of vital importance to be able to make decisions based on them, optimise processes and reduce inefficiencies, as well as increase visibility in real time.

We are probably halfway down that long road, where we are already generating quality data of our own, and we need to get even more benefit and better results from that data, more automation of processes and tasks, applying artificial intelligence capabilities, IoT, to work more predictively in all areas.

Empack: What does it mean to be a Logistics Transformation Specialist within the company and what is your day-to-day work like?

Nacho: Mainly working on the definition and implementation of standards and innovation in processes, methods and tools within the supply chain. Mastering, controlling, optimising end-to-end (E2E) processes and tools, driving improvement projects by performing flow analysis, cost analysis and calculations, and elimination of non-value added activities, thus contributing to the implementation of the most optimised logistics solution.

Being part of a transnational and multidisciplinary team, acting as a focal point within the Airbus Commercial perimeter in Spain, on the one hand, it is necessary to provide experience and support to the different plants and hubs of the Spanish perimeter, for the implementation of “Top-Down” projects and initiatives promoted from the head office, for the standardisation or homogenisation in processes, methods and tools of the supply chain. On the other hand, it is also necessary to bring local initiatives, detailed knowledge and improvement actions carried out in the Spanish perimeter closer to the central teams for the definition of standards in processes, methods and tools in order to update them, include them in the company’s “catalogues” and/or in the best practices that could be implemented in other centres in other countries.