From Standards to Action: How Aerospace Is Reinventing Supply Chain Excellence

When more than 300 aerospace and defense leaders gathered in Paris for the GIFAS Colloque Industriel (Industrial Forum), the discussion focused on how to turn recovery into resilience.

“The supply chain is still in recovery, but the industry is rebuilding capacity and confidence,” noted Clémentine Gallet, President of the Aéro-PME Committee.

After years of shocks, from pandemic disruption to raw-material shortages, the French and European aerospace ecosystem is regaining momentum. Backlogs are at record levels and cadences are rising; the challenge is no longer demand but execution. The priority now is to ensure that this rebound rests on stronger, more synchronized operations capable of sustaining growth at scale.

A shared framework for resilience

That is precisely the aim of Aéroexcellence™, the maturity framework developed by the GIFAS community to raise operational performance across the supply chain.

Structured around five domains—resources, planning and logistics, industrial management, quality, and operational excellence—it gives every manufacturer a clear roadmap to progress through three levels of maturity: Bronze, Silver, and Gold.

Since its launch in 2024, more than 400 sites worldwide have joined the initiative, making Aéroexcellence a de facto international reference. France, the UK, and Germany now coordinate its global governance, with new deployments under way in the United States, India, and Mexico.

In parallel, the AirCyber program has become the sector’s cybersecurity backbone. Thales reported more than 1,000 attempted attacks per year, underscoring the urgency of consistent protection.

“AirCyber is like a vaccine—it doesn’t eliminate risk, but it reduces both the probability and the impact of infection.” - Laurent Jara, Vice President Procurement at Airbus

Together, Aéroexcellence and AirCyber form the new foundation for industrial resilience.

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Digitalization as the execution layer

A third initiative presented at the Forum—the AeroApp label—completes this ecosystem. Led by Boost Aerospace, the label identifies digital solutions that meet Aéroexcellence criteria and help companies act on their improvement plans faster.

Pelico is proud to be among the six inaugural AeroApps contributing to this standard. Our manufacturing orchestration platform helps manufacturers operationalize their Aéroexcellence journey—by turning diagnostic insights into real-time, coordinated action across planning, supply, and production.

Where Aéroexcellence defines the framework, Pelico enables execution. Our platform connects data and teams so organizations can see, simulate, and resolve disruptions in minutes—not days.

What the roundtables revealed

During the event’s supply chain sessions, leaders from Airbus, Safran, and Dassault Aviation compared notes on the persistent pain points that still hinder performance.

Four themes stood out across every discussion:

1. Cadence management — balancing ramp-ups and ramp-downs in the face of unstable demand signals.
2. Supplier performance management — aligning processes and staffing across complex multi-tier networks.
3. APQP (Advanced Product Quality Planning) adoption — using structured quality planning not as compliance, but as a performance lever.
4. Collaboration and visibility — reducing fragmentation between engineering, supply, and production functions.

Each of these challenges traces back to the same root cause: disconnected data and delayed coordination. When information moves slowly, recovery does too.

From benchmark to behavior

That is where orchestration comes in.

By connecting planning, logistics, quality, and customer-support data in real time, Pelico enables teams to understand how every decision affects the broader system—and to act before issues escalate.

• Late supplier delivery? Teams see the downstream impact instantly.
• Ramp-up scenario change? Production and procurement align on feasible options.
• Quality hold? Managers quantify the cost in WIP and revenue at risk.

This is Aéroexcellence in motion: standards translated into daily operational decisions that protect cadence, margin, and trust.

The next phase of competitiveness

As the GIFAS Forum concluded, one theme resonated through every discussion: the industry’s strength lies in its ability to learn together and act together. Shared benchmarks like Aéroexcellence and AirCyber are building a common language across the value chain. The next challenge is to make that language executable—every day, on every shop floor.

Real resilience will not come from compliance alone, but from connected execution.

At Pelico, we’re proud to support this new era of aerospace performance, where excellence is not only defined. It’s orchestrated.