Qantas is expecting a 25 per cent efficiency improvement from a new $55 million material and logistics distribution centre opened this week near its Sydney headquarters.

At almost 20,000 square metres, the huge facility houses millions of parts - ranging from washers to big components - covering 180,000 part numbers, and uses a computerised mini-load system to retrieve smaller, commonly used components.

Better inventory management has allowed the airline to reduce by 20 per cent the volume needed to store the parts, and a job that once took 16 people now needs between one and eight, depending on the workload.

The centre has been designed in a U-shape to fit in with "lean" principles of minimum movements and eliminating as much waste as possible.

The result, according to Qantas general manager material and logistics Glen Everett, is a facility that is not only more efficient but safer.

Mr Everett said the facility had been "completely built with work groups from guys on the floor" participating in every part of the process to ensure the minimisation of risk.

"It's a single-level facility that eliminates a significant amount of wastage and, secondly, the occupational, health and safety risk that you have by having split-level facilities."

The showpiece of the new facility is the four aisles of yellow trays stowed in the high-rise mini-load automated storage and retrieval system.

Capable of moving at up to 230 metres per minute, automated stacker cranes sort their way through more than 260,000 components stored in 30,000 locations.

Personal digital assistant-laser scanner combinations and a specially designed warehouse inventory management system ensure the part is correct and prints a delivery label with the necessary critical information.

Qantas says it is one of the most advanced automated order processing and handling systems in Australia, but claims it is necessary because of the difficult task the airline faces.

"The aviation supply chain is far more complicated than the majority of supply chains, either because of the regulations that impact on Qantas or the unique nature of the asset we're supporting," Mr Everett said.

"That asset that we're supporting, the aircraft, is not across the road. It could be here, it could be in london, it could be in Singapore."

Qantas executive general manager David Cox said the new centre also demonstrated that cutting costs at the airline was not as simple as just cutting labour rates.

Qantas is at odds with unions over moves to do work on at least one Boeing 747 overseas and plans to axe 340 jobs when it closes heavy maintenance operations in Sydney next month.

Unions also claim that rostering and other changes the airline wants to make in new enterprise agreements will significantly cut wages.

But Mr Cox said that opening the new spare parts centre involved no significant changes in enterprise agreements.

"It's about investment in facilities, which we've got here, it's about lean principles," he said.

"Again, a big chunk of that percentage comes out of moving the work around and changing that. It comes out of better planning and managing the work and it comes out of the amount of scale you can get.

"And it's all of those things that come together to drive the savings."

Mr Cox also argued that the new centre -- combined with $85 million to establish a maintenance facility in Brisbane and $20 million spent on an engine shop in Sydney -- underscored Qantas's commitment to keeping jobs in Australia.

"If you start to tot those up we get to about $300 million worth of investment in the engineering business alone," he said. "We've probably got about another $50 million coming over the next 12 to 15 months.

"So when you talk about a commitment to Australia, this is it, and this is supporting the jet base and the 2900 maintenance people still here."