Boeing Hawker de Havilland is a manufacturer and supplier of sophisticated flight control components to major aircraft manufacturers in USA and Europe, including Boeing, British Aerospace, Airbus Industrie and Lockheed Martin.

In 1996, HdH was facing intense global competition on price and delivery, which caused it to recognise the need to become more competitive and innovative.

The company entered into long term strategic alliances with its preferred suppliers based on streamlining its own operation and the supply chain processes.

One of these, Apollo Metals, the distributor of aluminium plate from Hoogovens, moved a significant part of its operations from the UK to Sydney based on its relations with Hdh. Certain HdH production facilities were moved to Apollo to take advantage of their superior cutting, drilling and manufacturing traceability systems.

Due to the greater knowledge of production scheduling which this change generated, Apollo's already good delivery performance improved 99% to 99.98% on time.

As a result of initiatives such as the Strategic Supply Chain Agreement with Apollo and Hoogovens, HdH has retained sole supplier contracts with all its major customers.