Resilience Strategy Optimization for Large Aircraft Supply Chain Based on Probabilistic Language QFD

Introduction

According to the predictions of the two major commercial aircraft giants: Boeing and Airbus, the number of commercial aircrafts on demand might reach 30,000 in the next 20 years, and the blowout phenomenon of commercial aircrafts will appear globally (Chen,2012). Under the efforts of numerous organizations, China's self-developed domestic large aircraft has been successfully tested, and at present, the order has exceeded 800. Moreover, with the gradual retirement of Airbus A320 and Boeing 737, the order of domestic large aircraft will face a new round of growth (Chen,2017). The Supply Chain of the large domestic aircraft adopts the ” main manufacturer-supplier ” mode which is currently the optimal management mode for civil aviation manufacturing (Ruan,2015). Design and manufacture process of large passenger aircrafts is a complicated system, which is characterized by a long development period, complex composition, high challenging technology, high threshold of access to market, high investment risk and long return cycle (Mi, Ma, Qiang, Ma, & Peng, 2015). Outsourcing, internationalization, and complexity characterize today's aerospace supply chains, making aircraft manufacturers structurally dependent on each other (Brintrup, Wang, & Tiwari, 2015). Supply chain is greatly significant for the aerospace industry, while majority of delays and quality issues can be also traced back to supply chain management and coordination issues (Goetschalckx, & Mcginnis, 2013). Since the development of large passenger aircraft involves a large number of suppliers, the control of the main manufacturer to suppliers has certain difficulties, and the supply chain will face various interruptions. The increased frequency and the severe consequences disruptions have resulted in an increasing interest in risk (Gupta, Goh, De-Souza, Meng, & Garg, 2014; Heckmann, Comes, & Nickel, 2015; Raghunath, & Devi, 2018). Resilience ensures that the supply chain can recover quickly and cost-effectively from disruptions (Melnyk et al., 2014), hence, research on how to improve the resilience of the large passenger aircraft supply chain is particularly important.