New Challenges and Emerging Opportunities for Aerospace and Defense

A new 2010 Aerospace & Defense (A&D) market survey released by CSC found that substantive changes in U.S. defense policies, system priorities and budgets, and the effects of the global recession on commercial aerospace are driving new growth strategies within the A&D industrial base. The globally representative survey queried 2,200 senior and mid-level executives at leading global A&D companies to identify the current and near-term issues facing the A&D industry in today’s global market and economic dynamics.

The survey also revealed that A&D industry executives have significant concerns regarding market contraction, regulatory complexity, and technology, knowledge and talent management. However, these executives are also seeing growth opportunities in non-traditional sectors such as cybersecurity, renewable energy, and physical and information infrastructures. In order to pursue growth, both in their core defense and aerospace sectors and in these new markets, survey results showed businesses are focusing on the following approaches:

1. Innovation in products and services
2. Preservation of core product and manufacturing capabilities
3. Expansion of foreign military sales
4. Acceleration into adjacent commercial markets
5. Retention of institutional knowledge
6. Creation of new value chain networks to deliver continuous performance improvement

“We are entering a new era in the Aerospace & Defense industry given the change in U.S. government policy as well as the continued effects of the recession,” said Eileen Sweeney, president, Global Manufacturing Industry Sector, CSC. “Future growth for the industry is contingent upon developing new business strategies and models to pursue new markets and using technology to enable this shift.”

In addition to surveying respondents about general business strategy and areas for growth, the 2010 A&D market survey solicited responses about program management, engineering and production operations, supply chain, aftermarket/MRO, compliance and security, and human capital. Additional findings included:
• Most companies today rate themselves as average in the performance of their program management
• Companies believe that they can gain a competitive advantage by ensuring the free and rapid flow of information between both their engineering and production operations teams and between internal and external value chain partners
• The top three challenges to their global supply chains, as ranked by respondents, are lead time and schedule performance, supply chain event management and collaborative planning
• The majority ranked the following as the most significant emerging trends in aftermarket/MRO: shift to performance-based logistics, outsourcing of non-core services, and international supplier certifications and quality
• Most companies today consider themselves to be early adopters of new or emerging business information technology
• Many of the respondents, despite high unemployment in the U.S., reported that they are currently experiencing a shortage of qualified workers or expect a shortage within the next five years.

These findings came from an online survey of 2,200 global A&D industry executives from Aviation Week & Space Technology’s subscription database. The CSC survey was conducted online in late 2009. For complete results of the survey, visit http://cts.businesswire.com/ct/CT?id=smartlink&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.csc.com%2FA%26Dsurvey_2010&esheet=6208304&lan=en_US&anchor=www.csc.com%2FA%26Dsurvey_2010&index=1&md5=2ee8ac6d341376ae4e7f4e8aed45deed.