Leonardo has launched an initiative to support key suppliers to maximise competitiveness and customer satisfaction with a structured approach of continuous improvement, reducing excess and improving the quality and flexibility of products and services.

The project is part of the Leonardo Empowering Advanced Partnership 2020 (LEAP2020), the supply chain development programme, and was presented at the Lean Management & Leonardo Production System workshop. The workshop is dedicated to the companies featured in the ELITE Leonardo Lounge - the environment developed by ELITE for high-potential companies within Leonardo's supply chain.

"With the LEAP2020, we are strengthening and enhancing our supply chain", explains Giacinto Carullo, Leonardo's Chief Procurement & Supply Chain Officer, "leveraging on a transparent and sustainable partnership relationship with the excellence of the supply chain, to give life to a more competitive, integrated, innovative and resilient industrial eco-system."

The central theme developed by the workshop, held in a virtual setting, concerned the sharing of the vision and methodology of continuous improvement adopted by Leonardo with the Leonardo Production System, the specific programme aims to increase company competitiveness through the development of people's skills.

Leonardo's goal is to encourage the integration of supplier-customer processes with a view to continuous improvement and to create an industrial eco-system devoted to operational excellence, starting from the pillars of quality and logistics. More than forty SMEs from 12 different regions are involved in the ELITE Leonardo Lounge, with an aggregate turnover of one billion euros and over 5,700 employees.