MANCHING. Airbus Defence and Space is investing around €60 million into a new logistics centre for spare parts of military aircraft (Military Air Spares Centre – MASC) at Manching to the north of Munich. In the presence of the authorities, an official groundbreaking ceremony has marked the start of construction works, a company press statement said on September 28.

The self-financed 26,300 m² building is due to be operational in early 2020. In the new logistics centre, which covers an area similar to four football fields, function rooms, shipping points as well as office and recreation rooms for staff will also be located.

By pooling all logistics in the new centre, the site will be restructured and processes will be designed to maximise efficiency. An improved availability of materiel will contribute to an increased fleet availability for the German Air Force.

This step could be realised as the spare parts management for the German Air Force will be consequently transferred to Airbus and steered out of the Manching site.

The logistics centre will accommodate all spare parts and operating supplies that are necessary for producing and maintaining military aircraft. In total, it will be possible to stockpile up to 100,000 different parts. The state-of the art storage techniques will be process-optimised to supply each aircraft programme more efficiently and robustly

By centralising the site’s complete warehousing, the Military Air Spares Centre will become the hub for the entire materiel management.

The centre’s capacity already takes into account possible future requirements like a German Tornado Replacement by additional Eurofighter aircraft and a new European Future Combat Air System (FCAS).