Global engineering challenges grow

For the past 30 years, Boeing and Airbus have ruled the commercial skies, developing and supplying thousands of airplanes seating from 120 to more than 500 passengers. Emerging markets may make the skies a bit more crowded.

There has never been a period since the aerospace industry came into being where programs have been more dispersed across the globe, or where individual aircraft have been subject to so much outsourcing in the manufacturing stages. This high level of fragmented engineering and manufacturing has led to an international interdependency that has brought both benefits and challenges when it comes to companies, and nations, seeking to safeguard capabilities, while growing their own market share in highly competitive conditions.

As the emerging aerospace competitors in Brazil, Russia, India, and China expand into domestic markets and beyond, they have the advantage of being able to build new aerospace factories incorporating the very latest manufacturing systems, methods, and processes, without having to carry the economic burden of years of R&D effort. In many ways, this is an echo of what has happened in the automotive sector, where Asian nations now dominate world markets whereas until the 1970s they were net importers from traditional suppliers in Europe and the U.S.