A network of excellence

In our industry, confidence is the key. You will achieve very little without it, particularly if your customer finds it difficult to cooperate without it. Building that ring of confidence with you customer means that you can begin to build something really special together.

Created in 1998, Normandie AeroEspace (NAE) is Normandy’s network for the air, space, defence and security industries working on the major projects of tomorrow. Under the leadership of its president, Philippe Eudeline, the NAE network, based at the Madrillet Technopôle in Rouen, operates throughout Normandy. It currently has 137 members: 16 major industrial groups, four airports, a military base, 74 SME companies and two start-ups, 25 research laboratories and 15 higher education institutions. In total, the sector has more than 18,000 employees with a turnover of €2.2 billion in 2015.

NAE is also actively involved in building a European network of university researchers and clusters with the primary objective of identifying how Europe can contribute to funding its members’ research. Indeed, the NAE officially announced it had joined the European Aerospace Cluster Partnership (EACP) during last year’s Farnborough International Airshow.

“The goal of our cluster is to develop the aerospace endeavours of all members and for this we have four main activities,” Eudeline begins. “The first is research technology and innovation (RTI). Our goal is to build a roadmap for our members in order to see what kinds of technology we need to develop and then to prepare some programmes and eventually how to find funding for these programmes. Within our RTI activities we cover four main areas: propulsion, materials, embedded electronics and preparing the industry for the coming of the fourth industrial revolution, Industry 4.0.

“We share this roadmap with our members to identify the specific projects that we need to build. The first phase is the construction of the project, and here we identify our members in terms of who is doing what and assign a leader, who in many cases, works for a large company. This group can include 6-7 SMEs plus a research laboratory. Once the group has been assembled we then approach regional government for some funding. Since the NAE began, we have won 38 contracts worth €600 million.

“The second activity concerns education. The main drawback within Normandy is a lack of its attractivity. Normandy is well-known for tourism, the D-Day Landings and cheese, but perhaps not so well for its aerospace manufacturing skills. We have some issues surrounding obtaining enough resources. Fortunately, the region manages to capture many manufacturing orders, and every year we hire between 400-600 production people to complete the work. However, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to attract highly-skilled people into the Normandy region.

“We’ve established some specific training initiatives with local universities and engineering schools to ensure that we train people from Normandy to remain in Normandy. Recruiting technical engineers doesn’t seem to be a problem; its more to do with finding enough machine operators. It’s very difficult, as there are very few people available on the market and most young people don’t seem very interested in engineering as a career.

“Our third activity centres on communication, and we devote these efforts to our young people to show that we can offer very attractive job prospects within this sector. With estimates suggesting that over 9,000 passenger aircraft will need to be built in the next 20 years, there will be many opportunities this coming year. If young people were to begin their training now, they would be certain to have a job at the end. However, it’s a difficult situation in attracting young people and even parents don’t see the benefits of their children working in the aerospace manufacturing industry. We run many activities where we meet both young students and teachers from local colleges and invite them to see our members’ manufacturing facilities.

“Our fourth activity is devoted to SMEs. Our goal is to grow SMEs and we’ve many ways to achieve this aim. One way concerns the training to obtain all the relevant aerospace related certifications. We help set up some specific training for our members to gain all the relevant aerospace approvals and certifications. In some of the smaller SMEs, it’s the manager who does everything, i.e. both commercial and manufacturing activities. However, for an SME to grow, it needs to take on more staff to achieve this aim. We help SME managers to ‘think out of the box’ and discover what the future of aerospace will look like and how they can best organise themselves to face the new challenges.”

Marching on together

Eudeline says another aim is to create more business between the larger OEMs and the smaller SMEs. Originally, there was no link whatsoever between these two groups.

“Previous corporate policy among the bigger companies was to predominantly buy from low-cost countries, and not from local sources. We need to demonstrate that buying locally is more efficient. It’s perhaps a little higher in price, but it means dealing with local companies nearby. If you have an issue, it’s much easier – and less expensive - to resolve it rather than dealing with a company from the other side of the world. Our members have invested a lot of money to prove to their OEM customers that they can become a partner to these groups. We’re now working at an international level. We attended our first Paris Le Bourget Airshow in 2009, and we’ve now grown to a point where at the last Paris Airshow we had 41 Normandy SMEs in attendance. We’re now preparing for Le Bourget 2017 and already have over 40 SMEs that want to join us.”

The holistic view

According to Eudeline, NAE’s signing of a letter of intent with EACP represents an important milestone for the cluster.

“This is very important for us because there are other European aerospace clusters within EACP and this represents an efficient method of working with one another,” he concludes. “Being a member of EACP provides us with a bigger view of what is available in Europe in terms of acquiring key skills that presently do not exist in the Normandy region. We can now form partnerships and work together on specific programmes, such as market development, education and research and technology. Normandy has its own skills, but it’s better to develop them in partnership with other clusters, particularly if we don’t already possess a specific skill, hence our partnership with the EACP.”

www.nae.fr