Trend

Tooling up for aerospace engineering services

Indian aerospace engineering service providers have earned the confidence of global airline OEMs to get high-end work at home, says Vinutha V.

Indian engineering service providers have come of age and moved up the value chain. From the late 1990s till 2003, certain not-so-challenging tasks such as verification and validation (testing of requirements, functions, specifications and standards) were being outsourced to India. Now the entire lifecycle of system design—including coding, unit testing and integrated designing—is being offered by Indian players. For instance, Infosys played a vital role in designing a portion of the Airbus A380’s wings, and HCL Technologies will provide software and hardware development services to the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, a mid-sized passenger airliner under development by the world market leader. Although aerospace core technology outsourcing in India is still in its nascent stage when compared to auto outsourcing, Nasscom estimates that Indian IT firms can look at a $1 billion market from this sector over the next three to four years.

Aftermath of 9/11

One of the sectors that was hit hard by the events of 9/11 was the global aviation industry. The downstream effect was on aeroplane manufacturers and their tier-1 suppliers; it was such that they had to adjust to a different cost base almost overnight. Says Sanjay Ganju, Head, Aerospace Practice, HCL Technologies, “To cut costs immediately a number of them decided to move some low-level engineering tasks—such as validation, verification and testing—to low-cost geographies like India.” Adds Ravi Gopinath, Vice-president, Engineering & Industrial Services, TCS, “With the need to cut costs of air travel, aircraft manufacturing companies are under tremendous pressure to reduce development costs and improve the operating efficiency of their aircraft. Engineering services have a significant bearing on both. In order to be cost competitive and innovative, aircraft manufacturers are looking at engineering options that speed up development in a cost-effective manner.”

India has a strong legacy backed by experience in the IT, embedded, engineering design and R&D fields Sabyasachi Satyaprasad Research Director neoIT	The existing expertise, experience, applications and software available in automobiles can be logically used in aerospace Narendra Ghate Sr. Specialist, Industrial Design Tata Elxsi

India had the advantage of the availability of testing and prototyping facilities, ability to understand cutting-edge design technologies, and a mature aerospace industry with establishments such as GTRE (Gas Turbine Research Establishment), NAL (National Aerospace Laboratories), HAL (Hindustan Aeronautics) and ADA (Aeronautical Development Agency). “The existing production facilities of Airbus and Boeing are not able to meet the growing demand. When they planned to outsource their engineering work, Indian firms were considered for their capability and capacity,” notes Raman Subramanian, Vice-president, Quest. The rapid evolution of engineering technology also contributed to this trend. Observes Sanjay Dutt, Head, Product Lifecycle and Engineering Services, Infosys Technologies, “The significant increase in available bandwidth enabling the transfer of large data files, the digitisation of engineering, the emergence and acceptance of India as a significant source of engineering talent, and the success of IT outsourcing all contributed their mite.”

Not exactly cutting edge

Currently, work of relatively lower complexity comes to India, but it nevertheless forms an important part of aerospace design. Today, embedded development, control system design, simulation, high-level aeronautical system design, testing services, air traffic management systems, cockpit equipment support software and composite structuring are some of the areas that are emerging as the latest offshoring opportunities for India. Explains Sabyasachi Satyaprasad, Research Director at neoIT, “This is because India has a strong legacy backed by experience in the IT, embedded, engineering design and R&D fields that acts in our favour.” Outsourcing in aerospace revolves around structures such as fuselage, wings, avionics, engines and systems such as landing gear.

Today, detailed design for modelling, manufacturing, drafting and field failure analysis are being undertaken by Indian vendors. Non-core activities of technical documentation of the designing work and traceability are other areas. India has proven its creative abilities in conceptualisation in niche areas of ergonomics, operator envelope design work for cockpits, information layout design and graphical design of interiors. Under an agreement signed with Boeing, HCL Technologies will provide services in the areas of software and hardware development, as well as verification and validation, to Boeing and their tier-1 systems suppliers for the 787 programme.

Opportunities abroad

Indian service providers are moving up the value chain for high-end engineering services. Areas where innovation is undergoing rapid change include navigation systems, air control management systems, and engine control systems; these are expected to come to India soon. These areas require components that are highly complex and need a lot of expensive ancillary parts. With the availability of skill-sets and the ability to market in these domains falling short [in the West], Indian vendors are optimistic about bagging high-end engineering services work. Maturing in terms of current capabilities is another way to attract more work. Tata Elxsi is doing operator envelope design work for helicopter cockpits for a Britain-based customer. In future it aims to do similar work for commercial planes as well. Similarly, its product designing for seating and interface can be extended to the interiors of other aircraft. Its expertise in entertainment systems design for automobiles may move towards aerospace. Comments Narendra Ghate, Senior Specialist, Industrial Design, Tata Elxsi, “The existing expertise, experience, application and software available in automobiles can be logically used in aerospace engineering design too.” The company is expected to increase its revenues from aerospace to 30 percent from the current 20 percent within a year.

Weight is a critical aspect in aerospace. Altair Engineering in India has done optimisation and virtualisation work for both domestic customers and global customers. Nelson Dias, Altair’s Managing Director for South Asia says, “In future, we aim to focus on rotodynamics for aircraft engines and helicopter rotors, aerodynamic analysis, thermal and computational fluid dynamics analysis, structural durability and life extension, and structural and airborne noise and enclosures.”

Required certification

Indian vendors need to comply with mandatory conditions such as having SAE AS 9100 certification, a globally accepted quality system for suppliers to the aerospace industry. Only Infosys and HCL Technologies have this certification as of now. “If OEMs are concerned about the design aspects, their suppliers are cost-conscious so it’s a challenge for Indian vendors to offer services considering both the aspects,” Ghate of Tata Elxsi points out.

As global airline OEMs are moving from outsourcing to partnering with Indian vendors, the latter clearly need to equip themselves with process maturity.

vinutha@expresscomputeronline.com