To improve offshoring capability and to build a strong engineering talent pool in India, Airbus is set to start an ODC (Offshore Development Centre) model. This is being tried by it for the first time anywhere in the world.
The ODC model includes a commitment by Airbus to partner with Indian suppliers, handhold them in training and execution, and depute technical managers to manage these ODCs until they reach a level of maturity. This process may take at least two years for each such unit.
As a part of this process, Airbus has selected Bangalore-headquartered CADES as their ODC partner for fuselage design activities.
Said S Ravi Narayanan, chairman & CEO of CADES: “It is a great honour not only to us but to the entire Indian engineering community. We would do our best to utilise the opportunity and model to create a world class aerostructure design eco-system with the help of Airbus,” he added.
According to industry analysts, Airbus outsources nearly $3 billion worth of work to global suppliers annually, but the cumulative value of orders obtained by Indian companies put together are less than three per cent of this.
“The reasons being inability of Indian companies to climb up the aerospace engineering value chain and to provide total solutions.
Global companies like Assystem, Ferchau, Altran and AKKA receive and execute close to $2 billion worth of engineering services every year for Airbus, while four Indian companies — Infosys, Mahindra Satyam, CADES and Quest — execute orders worth about $40 million between them for Airbus,” an industry analyst said.
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According to industry estimates, there are less than 10,000 trained aerospace engineers in India and very few of them can do conceptual-evel or design authorisation, a must for high value contracts.
Airbus is a major player in the growth of Indian aviation. It also started an Airbus Engineering Center in India during 2006. Industry analysts say the fresh contract from Airbus can go up to as much as $300 million over a few years, based on the progress of the vendors.