Figure 5: Boeing 787 Work Share among Global Suppliers 4
Current Challenges in Engineering
Services
One of the main revenue streams for engineering
service companies is selling engineering man-
hours so productivity has a direct and significant
impact on the company’s financial results.
To ensure profitability thus requires higher
investment in training of the workforce in addition
to maintaining consistently high productivity rates,
which would result in strong competitiveness in
the market. Different types of training are needed
for the different types of engineering specialists
employed by the organisation. This results in
an additional operating cost on the engineering
service provider since a wide range of training
is required throughout the year. The conundrum
has always been controlling investments in
training while still keeping the work force highly
competent. The skilled workforce also faces higher
turnover rates due to talent acquisition efforts by
competitors as such highly skilled workers are
scarce and much sought after in the job market.
Another overlooked but important aspect
of engineering services is ensuring that the
customer’s immediate service requirements
are attended to in an expeditious manner. This
puts tremendous pressure on the resource
management element of the engineering service
provider as it requires them to maintain available
resources at the appropriate times to support its
customers’ demands. The average acquisition
time of the unplanned resource (normally called
“lead time”) can be estimated by the organisation’s
experts, based on historical data or having close
relationships with the customers’ procurement
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