Aerospace and Defense

WGA’s Aerospace and Defense expertise

Optimizing portfolio strategy

In a time of decreasing government spending, aerospace and defense industry players need to engage in decisive portfolio management if they are to continue to create shareholder value. We have significant experience in helping companies optimize their product and R&D portfolios from supporting exhaustive analyses of current investments and identifying divestment opportunities, to developing strategies to redeploy capital and resources to new, high-potential segments, products and service offerings and technologies.

Driving growth

In light of the current economic cycles and pricing pressures from customers, aerospace and defense prime and sub-contractors need to make bold efforts to identify growth opportunities. We help companies identify international markets in which to extend their traditional capabilities, develop services in adjacent sectors, and expand within the aerospace and defense verticals. Working with functional and industry experts from across the firm, we can help companies identify attractive white space areas in the defense and security industries and to capture these new business opportunities.

Improving program affordability

Aerospace and defense contractors face an affordability imperative. This requires strategies to weather the retrenchment in government spending in the short-term while building capability to be competitive in the long-term. We help companies achieve both objectives, with the overall goal of improving their agility and market responsiveness.

Our current work includes developing processes for significantly reducing costs of direct labor, direct material, and indirect costs to achieve lean, cost-efficient operations. We help organizations to improve affordability by adopting design-to-value principles and redesigning critical processes and capabilities, including product development and production models, supplier relationships, and program operating models and risk management.

Transforming operational performance

We help clients design and implement manufacturing processes to increase plant performance and improve supplier coordination. This includes in-depth evaluation of network configuration, capital productivity, and plant-level information and communication flow. Working with WGA experts in operations and supply chain logistics, we help aerospace and defense manufacturers build their capabilities in areas such as modular manufacturing, green manufacturing and IT-enabled manufacturing to reduce cost, increase efficiency, and enhance growth opportunities.

Increasing supply chain agility

Commercial aircraft and defense contract manufacturers are continually looking for ways to reduce the cost of inventory and increase responsiveness. WGA supports manufacturers by bringing best practices in supply chain management and lean manufacturing. Our work extends from performing basic scenario evaluations to complex optimization analysis of entire value chains, including the impact of achieving different economies of scale and employing varied production technologies.

Aerospace and Defense Client Recommendations

Our Global Services & Support business unit was working with our internal business partners to develop our 2030 business strategy roadmap. We were having difficulty with prioritizing our business needs. Some of our supply partners needed a firm picture of our roadmap immediately in order to formalize commitments. We reached out to one of our strategic consulting suppliers for assistance, but they wouldn’t be able to dispatch a team to help us for over 3 months. That’s when I called WGA. As a true partner, WGA had their team on the ground 2 days later and we were able to complete our strategy and planning efforts in just 6 weeks! WGA is now our go to/preferred strategy consulting supplier.

PamelaDirector Business Planning$95B Aerospace and Defense Manufacturer

After two decades of organic growth, many of our managers in the organization were starting to see a chronic problem. Our operations had become too complex to manage. Our executive leadership agreed and my department was assigned to lead the effort. We reached out to WGA to help us identify and prioritize meaningful simplification opportunities. They worked with us to facilitate designing, planning and implementing all aspects of the program. The results were incredible, we consolidated and reduced over 950+ global positions and eliminated over 7000+ waste and bottleneck problems. We also consolidated and relocated three of our manufacturing centers into one lower cost location. The bottom line results of WGA’s services were outstanding! Read more

ZachVice President Organizational Effectiveness$87B Aerospace and Defense Contractor

3 Years after purchasing two smaller competitors in our industry, our executive leadership team was struggling to see the cost savings of our consolidation efforts. Two other strategy consulting firms were brought in to assist us in determining and fixing the problems. After we spent $18M USD in 6 months with limited success, we decided to end the contracts early with the two other firms. Our COO recommended that we call WGA. In just 3 months, WGA had developed a strategy to simplify our operational processes, merge overlapping business systems and consolidate our service offerings in various international operations. Since our first project, WGA remains our key trusted strategy and consulting partner for all of our business needs Read more

JavierSenior Vice President Corporate Strategy and Planning$44B Aerospace and Defense Contractor

Over the past 10 years, our company has experienced a number of failures and setbacks using each of the “big name” system integrators and consulting companies. We realized that we do a much better job of leading our own SAP efforts and now simply look outside to staff our projects. We always bring in WGA to assist us with all of our project staffing needs. WGA provides us with top talent and high performers that ensure we achieve our goals and projects are on-time and on-budget. WGA’s PMO outsourcing has also allowed us to dramatically reduce our project tracking and management costs. Read more

AnnSr. Director - Business Systems$38B Aerospace & Defense Contractor

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