Airbus rewarded its top ten suppliers at the Farnborough airshow during the Airbus Supplier Support Award Ceremony, for their full commitment and continued product quality improvement.

Airbus top ten suppliers receiving an award for best performance are Airbus Avionics, Diehl Avionik Systeme, AOA-LGG, Vibro-Meter, Goodrich Fuel and Utility Systems, Technofan, Ultra Electronics, Goodrich Aircraft Interior Products, Parker, and Honeywell Aerospace Electronics Systems. Also, a special award for best support improvement in 2003 was given to Hamilton Sundstrand.

Airbus rating system has been evaluating the support performance of its suppliers in terms of products, services and costs for nearly 15 years now. This ranking has evolved, with new standards being defined to measure our suppliers performance and thereby to help our customers to achieve the best performance for their aircraft.

"I would like to congratulate our best suppliers who strive to achieve the highest level of customer satisfaction says Patrick Gavin, Airbus Executive Vice President Customer Services. We are delighted to see that the support delivered by our suppliers gains in quality, in a continuous momentum. The quality of the support our suppliers provide to our client operators is a key ingredient of customer satisfaction and something we are closely monitoring.

The best suppliers results were defined by benchmarking for product reliability, technical assistance, service, repairs performance, spares delivery and customer communications. Maintenance costs and spares prices are also a primary factor for customer satisfaction. Supplier performance is measured by Airbus and its customer airlines. This year, 38 suppliers were rated and over 75 airlines contributed to the assessment, with over 4700 survey questionnaires returned.

Airbus analyses the feedback from its customers together with the suppliers' performance reports to evaluate areas for further improvement, thus driving improvement action plans for the suppliers.

With regard to the high response Airbus received from its customers, Patrick Gavin continued: "The level of participation we have had from our customers demonstrates their constant involvement in supporting this rating system. Our customers appreciate the positive impact it has on the quality of services they receive and ultimately on safe, reliable and cost-effective operations satisfying passenger expectations. Naturally, they wish to be part of such a beneficial process".

Airbus is an EADS joint company with BAE Systems.


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