Gillis employs 43 people to produce 2-2.5m threaded fasteners per year out of three buildings in Dieupentale, Occitane, France (though it also operates a UK office in Hull). It buys in raw material – steel, stainless steel and Inconel – for hot- or cold-forging, then machines the parts, carries out thread rolling, performs inspections and does surface treatment of fasteners for aerospace clients.
“You can’t buy aerospace fasteners in the same way as general industry fasteners,” says product manager Nicholas Martres. “It is more complicated. You have to make sure the suppliers are complying with everything: aerospace norms and customer-specific norms.” He mentions EN9100 in particular.
Martres continues: “We are challenged in terms of quality: we cannot fail in breakage. That is standard. And more and more we are challenged on time delivery, and what action we can take to deliver on time.” This is the case because Airbus has indicated that it expects an increase in volumes of 15% in 2023, and more in 2024, so that demand cascades down through the supply chain.
Time is in fact a key competitive advantage of this nimble manufacturer. “We don’t compete in high-volume parts, but in the range of one to 10,000-20,000. We try to have a lead time of 10 weeks, which is quite fast,” Martres adds.
He continues: “Even for non-standard parts, we can be quite fast in terms of analysing the product. If you go to a bigger player with a non-standard part, they will not reply or take a long time. This is why it’s very important to have surface treatment in house, especially at the moment, because that is something with long lead times and uncertainty about lead times.”
Change has come to that department, as European REACH regulations outlaw the anti-corrosion treatment hexavalent chromium. Gillis has begun a six-month qualification of a new process that complies with those regulations according to an Airbus specification. Martres says that as the only change is the last step, procedurally it should not be difficult. But as the change affects the part’s appearance, a bigger issue might be customer acceptance. He explains: “Assembly operators in Airbus are trained to check if the part is different to what it was yesterday. If it is, they are trained to dispose of the parts, or ask quality control if there’s a problem. They do that because any variation could have an impact on physics. That can be very restrictive; or at least it is with a new treatment process.”
But the supply chain is going to have to get used to more change, he points out. When asked about the role of innovation in the industry, he reflects: “I believe the industry didn’t feel it in the past 15 years because the design of planes didn’t change very much. Now that we are going into the path of green aviation, with lighter and new kinds of engines, especially Airbus is designing all kinds of new things, with different materials and composites, and it has an impact on people like us. We can’t put a fastener for an aluminium wing into a composite wing.”
Fortunately, he says, the Böllhoff acquisition exposes Gillis to a more open collaboration culture – it often works with universities and research centres in the automotive industry.
Another new challenge on the horizon is automation, which Airbus has identified as a lever of improving its competitiveness. For a machinist that is used to just producing parts based on a design or to a standard, this is a challenge, Martres adds, as now it will be down to suppliers such as Gillis to provide both fasteners and an installation solution. Fortunately Gillis can again draw on the expertise of its new corporate parent, which has experience doing just this sort of work in the automotive industry.
