Competitiveness and Innovation of Aerospace and Defence Industry through digital integration of the supply chain

European Aerospace Digital Hub BoostAeroSpace Worldwide Launch

In the 21st century, inter-company digital collaboration has become critical and vital for the competitiveness and for all main programs of the Aerospace and Defense (A&D) industry.

For the Aerospace & Defense industry, 70% to 80% of the value is provided by the Supply Chain, from Tier 1 to Tier n, most of them being SMEs. In order to strengthen the European A&D programs our competitiveness has to be improved at extended enterprise level.

In order to enable and speed up the deployment of digital processes and tools across the extended enterprise from the OEM till Tier n suppliers (SMEs) and to customers, standardized solutions and open standards are a key factor of success, as the proliferation of proprietary formats for each of the companies' e-business projects would lead to heterogeneous solutions difficult and expensive to integrate for the suppliers.

To address this challenge, EADS/Airbus, Dassault Aviation, Safran and Thales have decided to create an European Aerospace Digital Hub called BoostAeroSpace providing high value-added standardized secured collaborative services:

• AirCollab (collaborative workspace, e-meetings)
• AirDesign (PLM collaboration, digital mock-up sharing)
• AirSupply (SCM collaboration, logistics exchanges).
  

AirCollab service is open since April 2011 whilst AirDesign and AirSupply services will be fully operational before year end. The platform will then progressively be used by its Founders and their international partners and suppliers.

Two main benefits are targeted:

• The use of these standardized services by the main European OEMs will dramatically improve the generic collaboration with their suppliers, the interoperability with their information systems, reduce processes cycles and overall costs.
• Those services will be provided as “Software as a Service” (SaaS) for all OEMs, suppliers and small companies wherever positioned along the supply chain, enabling them to make the same gains of competitiveness than the 5 Founders.
  BoostAeroSpace, will offer dedicated “Cloud Computing” services to the European Aerospace industry, ensure the digital continuity of the supply chain, and, so, improve the competitiveness of the whole European Aerospace and Defense industry.
  

Informations : http://www.boostaerospace.com
Contacts
Pierre Faure, Dassault Aviation, AirDesign
Matthias Naumann, EADS, AirSupply
Philippe Laflandre, EADS, Security
Jean Ferlus, Safran, AirCollab
Patrick Boquet, Thales, Infrastructure integration