General Management

The aerospace supply chain has over many years developed in to a complex structure of organisations and capabilities that are required to define, design, develop, produce and operate products. This process can typically occur over a life cycle of forty years from product concept to final disposal. The organisations involved, vary from very large organisations operating globally such as BAe, Airbus, Rolls-Royce and AgustaWestland, to small organisations with specific capabilities.

The introduction of the World Wide Web has allowed other ways of achieving virtual enterprises. Broadband has overcome the initial constraints and allowed vast improvements in availability of information, with the increased speeds and data capacity that can be transmitted. These services are inexpensive for smaller organisations to apply, and hence allow the opportunity for more routine integration of organisations within the engineering functions and supply chain.

Combining the IT capability available for the design process and Broadband technology has created an integrated infrastructure that can be significantly more effective, efficient, and is within the reach of smaller organisations either individually or operating as supply chain clusters and networks.

A pilot project was undertaken during in 2003 with AgustaWestland Helicopters, They had a requirement for a new interiors for the EH101 helicopter. Diamonite design, and produce interiors to a range of military standards. In order to undertake the activity they have to consider the supply base they will use and obtain the required design information covering specific parts, material specifications, dimensional design data, nuts, bolts, fixing compounds and adhesives, for inclusion in their own product design and data model. This in turn has to be integrated in to the final design material for the EH101.

Using Broadband systems to transmit and receive data, Diamonite and Assystem collaborated to create the collaborative engineering capability to achieve Diamonite's and AgustaWestland's requirements, by defining the required supply chain suppliers design and quality standards, accessing customer and supplier data via the web and broadband.