By Lindsay Hughes | November 14, 2013 Estimated reading time 5 minutes, 25 seconds.
This year, the Ontario AME Symposium and Tradeshow in Mississauga, Ont., attracted a whole new group of attendees with a series of full-day purchasing seminars. The first of their kind in Canada, the seminars were attended by buyers representing aviation and aerospace companies big and small, who added a whole new dynamic to the show’s typical crowd.
“The idea of the purchasing sessions was to get training to buyers,” said AME Ontario Symposium co-chair and Precision Aero Components sales manager, Cara Tweyman. “There’s no show in Canada that offers any kind of training like this. The AME shows are geared towards AMEs or technicians, but there has never been anything there for the buyers themselves. We figured it was needed in Ontario.”
The full day of seminars was split into four sessions, all taught by industry representatives from Jazz Aviation LP, SkyService, and Aviall Canada Inc. The session topics were selected from a huge pool of ideas, noted Tweyman, with the final agenda including: the importance of a proper receiving inspection; supply chain logistics – risk and compliance; total landed costs/parts issues; and supply chain transformation.
Each session touched on a variety of areas. Session One covered the proper way to fill out paperwork, and provided an overview of unapproved parts and how to spot them; Session Two reviewed the ins and outs of getting a package through customs while avoiding delays, a review of HS Codes, NAFTA, terminology on import and export documents, and different types of shipping and the hidden costs associated with them. Session Three highlighted all the costs that go into buying parts, and addressed different ways to reduce total landing costs by technological solutions, planning and partnering. Session Four introduced new ideas to simplify the entire supply chain process and reviewed vendor management inventory processes and vertical lift modules.
The feedback received by the Ontario AME committee of volunteers has been overwhelmingly positive, said Tweyman. “When this all started, I said to the group that I’d be happy if we got 10 people in the sessions, and we ended up with almost 30. There’s been nothing but positive remarks coming back, even some ideas for next year and the year after. They’re telling us what they want to see, and this is coming from people who have never even attended the symposium before.”
One of the session’s participants, Brant Aero accounts manager Jennifer Field, supervises all purchasing, shipping, receiving, and inventory operations for that company. She said a seminar like this was needed to provide proper training and a clearer understanding of what’s required at the purchasing level, to be competitive in the Canadian marketplace.
“For anyone that may be new to purchasing or receiving, these courses would be mandatory in my opinion,” said Field. “A lot of what was discussed took me years of learning through experience, but it was nicely summed up in these seminars.”
Field added that having these seminars at the Ontario AME Symposium was a great way to open up lines of communication between AMEs and buyers, in order to share ideas, methods, and experiences, as well as being a unique and valuable training tool for newcomers in the industry. Along with many other attendees, Field has offered up ideas for future seminars to Tweyman, and hopes to see the Ontario AME Association continue to build on this initial event.
“Although the information provided during these seminars was excellent and had great variety, it mainly covered things that we would have already had to learn during initial job training. If I were newer to the industry, these seminars would be an excellent training tool. I truly hope they continue to run these same seminars again, as all the information given was equally important. Some other topics I might like to see would be customer-supplied parts, dangerous goods/hazmat items, undocumented parts, non-approved sources, or anything out of the norm that often requires extra clarification,” said Field.
Tweyman said that based on the feedback they’ve received so far, purchasing seminars will continue to be offered at future AME Ontario symposiums.
“I think we have to offer them,” said Tweyman. “We’re always looking to improve the symposium; we’re always looking to get more attendees, new attendees, and a different variety of people. The feedback I’ve had is to keep going with it, and make it a part of symposiums to come.”
