Bombardier Inc Case Study

Executive Summary

Bombardier Aerospace, a division of Bombardier Inc. is the third largest leader in

the design and manufacture of innovative aviation products for the regional, business and

amphibious aircraft markets and defense services. Since 1986, Bombardier has acquired

various companies in the aerospace industry such as Canadair, Short Brothers plc, Lear

Jet Corporation and Boeing’s subsidiary de Havilland corporation. The Aerospace

division headquartered in Montreal employs more than 27,130 employees across 13

facilities around the globe and it generates over 50% of the entire company’s total

revenue.

Problem Statement

Over the last few decades, Bombardier Aerospace acquired various companies

and inherited the data, processes and systems of these companies. The diversified legacy

systems created a lot of integration problems and process inefficiency, as information

systems failed to communicate with each other effectively leading to increased

maintenance costs, low visibility of inventory, process delays, low inventory turnovers,

supplier proliferation and price inconsistency and multiple bill of materials. The

capability of the legacy systems was severely limited that it became very difficult to use

it for large scale projects which totally impaired the growth of the company.

Data Analysis

The legacy system Bombardier Management System (BMS) that supported the

aerospace manufacturing activities since 1990s failed to integrate with other business

3 partner’s systems and was unable to cope up with rapid business changes. This resulted in

huge operational costs and poor data management which affected the growth of the

company.

The executives in the top management identified the problem and shifted its focus

to develop an integrated large scale ERP system known as BMIS. The expectation of the

new system is to align all the operations of the acquired companies by implementing a

single set of unified system and processes. A budget of $363