How Avionics Engineering Solution Use In Product Development | Cyient
The Integrated Product Development Process unlocks value across various stages of a product development life cycle using avionics engineering solutions.
The aerospace and defense (A&D) industry is highly sensitive to changes in technology within the ecosystem. However, increased competition in the commercial aviation space and shrinking defense budgets have forced OEMs and suppliers to check their spending. So, to keep pace with advances in technology and innovative applications, industry players are looking at innovative ways that enable them to upgrade and retrofit existing systems. One way they are doing this is to partner with external vendors to revisit the product development process related to avionics engineering solutions.
Why are OEMs and suppliers wary of outsourcing product development?
Avionics systems play a crucial role in ensuring the safety of an aircraft (passenger or cargo) while flying. In addition to being robust in terms of build quality, these components need to be extremely reliable and capable of operating in the most challenging of conditions. For OEMs, their suppliers, and other intermediaries who undertake system or platform upgrades, every component is essential, and even the smallest improvement counts. Therefore, when companies decide to procure parts from external vendors, they are faced with the following issues:
1) Program risk: While having multiple vendors and sub-vendors enables customers to choose from among the best, integrating disparate systems and subsystems and assembling components from multiple vendors also increases the inherent program risk. The probability of mismatch, incompatibility, and failure rises exponentially as the number of external variables or vendors goes up.
2) Product delivery: A conversion project involves hundreds and thousands of components; a single delay or misalignment in the delivery schedule can have a cascading effect on the entire project. Additionally, the certification process for such components follows the highest standards, so the final components need to meet exact specifications.
3) Project cost: As the complexity of projects increases, so does the need for redesigning subsystems and replacing parts within the component. In such a situation, suppliers must be financially prudent at every step of the development life cycle because every reduction in cost and performance improvement translates to financial returns.