JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #97 - Special JEC Americas - May/June 2015 - 5

JCM: What is your return on
experience on your participation
concerning the the Nose FUselage
DEMonstrator (NOFUDEM) started
by Airbus in 2006, and are you
involved in other similar projects?

N.O. : The Nofudem project
enabled us to remove a number
of technological bottlenecks and
consolidate our intellectual and
industrial property rights on our
solutions. It also enabled us to
acquire further fibre placement
expertise. Our know-how has
been recognized, as well as our
robustness and reliability. From
a practical point of view, we have
been able to achieve positioning
success and win contracts on
projects for the A350 main landing gear doors. This achievement
is also important in terms of our
reputation and has enabled us
to work now with Dassault and
Gulfstream, which speaks for the
maturity of Daher's expertise.
Seven out of our ten largest recent
or ongoing projects have involved
composite materials. Ecowingbox, for example, is winding up
five years of project, and helped us
develop an all-composite landing
gear box for business aircraft. This
project is especially emblematic
of our progress and has enabled
us to ramp up on out-of-autoclave
technologies, thermoplastic welding, and functional integration
in connection with thermoset
processes.
Robofin is another ongoing project that gives an idea of our range
of activities. Its aim is to provide
a solution for finishing extra-large
composite parts like aircraft stiffeners or wing components. And
the aim of the FATAL project is to
improve our additive manufacturing skills. These are usually threeto-five-year projects, carried out in
collaboration with our suppliers.
We partner with excellence cen-

tres like the EMC2 competitive
cluster and the IRT Jules Verne
technology research centre, which
are standard-setters for production technologies in France. We
make progress together to ensure
that we are the "Best in class" for
international calls for tender.
JCM: The first Daher Suppliers'
Day was held this year, bringing
together 300 of your suppliers.
What are the goals for an ambitious event like this one?

N.O. : Our strategy today is to

provide support to our suppliers - we consider them more as
partners - as we strive together for
industrial excellence. Suppliers'
Day brought our metal and composite partners together around
a clear message: in a competitive
international context, lowering
costs doesn't necessarily mean
lowering margins. Our support
approach goes so far as helping
them obtain research tax credits to
avoid missing out on the technological shifts they need in order to
be more competitive. Since this is
a specific feature of our business
model, it is very important for us
to maintain this dialogue to be
more responsive, cut down on
development times and produce
the right part at the right price.
Half of the 300 participants were
composite professionals, including equipment manufacturers,
processors, and raw material
manufacturers.
JCM: Do you plan to push your
"combination manufacturing and
services" strategy even further?

N.O. : Our business model is
fairly atypical, compared to those
of our competitors. Our twofold
expertise enables us to offer our
customers comprehensive services, i.e. developing, industrializing, manufacturing subassemblies,
delivering them, and setting them

Daher emphasises industry and services to become a premium supplier

up at our customers if necessary.
As part of this process, we want
to be their only interface. Our
research led us to develop what
we call the Daher Control Room,
a tool that, when we deliver a subassembly, helps us monitor both
our own production and that of
our suppliers upstream. Thanks to
these indicators, we are now able
to move towards a turnkey solution. Our end goal is to develop a
"single supplier-single customer"
relationship.
JCM: The defining characteristic
for 2015 is change, including new
governance and a redefining of the
group's brand image. Can you tell
us the reasons for these changes?

N.O. : Our motto is excellence.
We continuously reinforce our
business agility vis-à-vis our customers and partners. The purpose
of changing our organization is to
"liberate" our creativity and our
proactivity with respect to technical and material issues.
The group's management changes
are aimed at adapting our skills
to address the challenges of the
future. To make things more
transparent for our customers, we
decided to reposition our group
under a single brand name that
conveys innovation, excellence
and breakthrough in our sector.
Our image did not sufficiently
No97 May - June 2015 /

convey the significant internal
synergies among our different
businesses. We have simplified
our communication with a clearly
identifiable brand name.
JCM: In this context, will your R&D
strategy and the role of composite
materials risk being challenged, or
on the contrary, be reinforced?

N.O. : Our capacity for differentiation is mainly what drives our
success in the aerospace sector.
Our new governance intends to
continue this approach, with two
lines of action in mind: research
and technological intelligence. We
will continuously and incrementally improve our technologies
to reduce the time it takes to
industrialize our solutions.
We also follow the technologies
of tomorrow based on the idea of
making breakthroughs with respect to the solutions we currently
propose. Thermoplastics, fibre
placement, and out-of-autoclave
solutions are important research
topics for our group. We also
take inspiration from the "factory
of the future" and simulation/
visualization and robotization
technologies, which we deem
essential for developing our future
activity. n
More information:
www.daher.com

jec composites magazine 5

http://www.daher.com/

JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #97 - Special JEC Americas - May/June 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #97 - Special JEC Americas - May/June 2015