Airbus on Wednesday said it had signed “strategic agreement” with two Bangalore-based tier-1 suppliers – QuEST Global Engineering and CADES Digitech – for engineering services support for its various programmes.
QuEST will focus on Airbus wing and pylon engineering activities. CADES will support the fuselage engineering activities.
They were selected from 20 suppliers and would work on a broad list of critical engineering activities across different aircraft programmes of Airbus, the world's leading aircraft maker said.
QuEST and CADES are already part of parent EADS's engineering strategic suppliers. Each will have offices in Europe and dedicated centres in India as part of the long-term partnership.
Dr Srinivasan Dwarakanath, Airbus Vice-President, Industrial Cooperation for Asia-Pacific & Middle-East, said, “India is a strategic country for Airbus and with these agreements we are increasing our already substantial industrial footprint in the country.”
He did not share the value of orders that could flow to the companies or the specific Airbus programmes.
Some 2,000 Indian based employees work directly or indirectly with Airbus. He said 1,500 of them were from its half a dozen engineering solutions partners such as Infosys, TCS, Mahindra Satyam and these two companies.
It works with domestic industry in aerostructure design and build, engineering information systems, and a spares centre. The Airbus Engineering Centre India (AECI) and Airbus Training India (ATI) employ 200 local engineers and will grow to 400 by 2012.
“The new agreement aims to consolidate engineering services already bought from several (around six) suppliers, and to focus the development of competences with these two tier-1 suppliers.
“QuEST specialises in establishing dedicated engineering centres for high technology customers and we open one for Airbus to support new product development and sustenance engineering,” said Mr Ajit Prabhu, Co-Founder and CEO of QuEST.
“CADES (will) create a dedicated centre for Airbus Fuselage Engineering. This gives us opportunity to build an enduring value for Airbus, our employees and all stakeholders,” said Mr S. Ravi Narayanan, Chairman and CEO of CADES.