Five leading European aerospace and defence companies, EADS/Airbus, Dassault Aviation, Safran and Thales, have decided to create a European digital hub for the management of collaborative programmes and their supply chains. The platform is called BoostAeroSpace and provides highly value-added standardised and secured collaborative services.

In the 21st century, inter-company digital collaboration has become critical for competitiveness and for all main programmes of the aerospace and defence industry. For the industry, 70% to 80% of the value is provided by the Supply Chain, from Tier 1 to Tier n, most of them being small and medium enterprises. In order to strengthen European aerospace programmes competitiveness has to be improved at extended enterprise level. In order to enable and accelerate the deployment of digital processes and tools across the extended enterprise from the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) to Tier n suppliers and to customers, standardised solutions and open standards are a key factor for success. A 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.

BoostAeroSpace will provide the following services:

• AirCollab (collaborative workspace, e-meetings)
• AirDesign (Product Lifecycle Management collaboration, digital mock-up sharing)
• AirSupply (Supply Chain Management collaboration, logistics exchanges)

AirCollab service has been available since April 2011 whilst the 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 standardised services by the main European OEMs will dramatically improve the generic collaboration with their suppliers and the interoperability with their information systems. It will also reduce process cycles and overall costs. These services will be provided as “Software as a Service” (SaaS) for all OEMs, suppliers and small companies along the whole supply chain, enabling them to make the same gains in competitiveness as the five founders.

BoostAeroSpace will offer dedicated “Cloud Computing” services, thus ensuring the digital continuity of the supply chain and improve the competitiveness of the whole European aerospace industry.