Airbus has signed agreements with Indian tier one suppliers Quest Global Engineering and Cades Digitech aimed at broadening the company’s international supplier footprint in line with EADS group’s vision 2020. The move also focuses on partners with access to India’s engineering services talent pool.
Both, Quest and Cades are existing members of a select list of EADS Engineering Strategic Suppliers. The new agreement aims to consolidate engineering services already bought from several suppliers, and to focus the development of competences with the two tier one suppliers. Each will have offices in Europe, and dedicated centres in India.
Quest will focus on Airbus wing and pylon engineering activities and Cades on Airbus Fuselage engineering activities. Both were selected from over 20 suppliers and will work on a many critical engineering activities across different Airbus aircraft programmes.
“Quest was chosen for their core engineering skills and strategic orientation towards engineering,” said Matthew Orchard, Head of Design Series Aircraft, Airbus Wing and Pylon Engineering Centre of Excellence (CoE).
“Quest specialises in establishing dedicated engineering centres for high technology customers and we open one for Airbus to support new product development and sustenance engineering,” said Ajit Prabhu, Co-Founder and CEO of Quest.
“The selection process of this agreement has been driven by the experience and quality performance of Indian suppliers. We are impressed by the ability of CADES to propose the right solution to reach the excellence required in Engineering services for Airbus,” said Robert Nardini, Airbus VP & Head of Fuselage Engineering Centre of Excellence (CoE)
“CADES, a player in global aerospace engineering, is proud to partner with Airbus to create a dedicated centre for Airbus Fuselage Engineering. This gives us opportunity to build an enduring value for Airbus, our employees and all stake holders”, said S Ravi Narayanan, Chairman & CEO of CADES.
Airbus’ co-operation with India dates back almost 40 years. Today it covers numerous areas including the Airbus Engineering Centre India (AECI) and Airbus Training India (ATI) which employs over 200 local engineers and will grow to 400 by 2012. There is close industrial co-operation in Aerostructure design and build, Engineering Information Systems, and a Spares Centre. In total, some 2,000 Indian based employees work directly or indirectly with Airbus.
“India is a strategic country for Airbus and with these agreements we are increasing our already substantial industrial footprint in the country. On top of our Airbus Engineering Centre in Bangalore, these new long term partnerships demonstrate our commitment to support and benefit from India’s flourishing aerospace sector,” said Dr. Srinivasan Dwarakanath, Airbus VP, Industrial Cooperation for Asia-Pacific & Middle-East.
