Guillaume Faury, Eurocopter's chief executive since the beginning of May, has outlined his strategic vision for the Marseille-headquartered helicopter manufacturer.

Faury, who worked at the airframer for 10 years prior to leaving for a post in the automotive sector, told reporters at Paris that the company will be increasingly "industrialised" as it looks to deliver increasingly complex products to its customers to "enable them to achieve their very demanding missions".

This will involve adopting the streamlined manufacturing processes and procurement activities available to a large company. "At a €6 billion [turnover] level we are able to apply methods from other industries to be more efficient," he says.

Additionally it will look to leverage the technological developments it has made over the last five years in order to bring them to market. The time taken for this process in the future will also be reduced, he says.

"Over the last five years we have developed a lot of new technology. In the future we will focus on introducing them into new products."

A number of new products are "in the pipeline" says Faury, which will offer "new capabilities on new platforms".

He cites the development of the X3 compound rotorcraft, a hybrid drive system to aid auto-rotation landings and a recently unveiled optionally piloted helicopter as examples of the company's innovative streak.

The hybrid solution is likely to be available as a customer option in the relatively near term, adds chief technology officer Jean-Brice Dumont.

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Source: Flight Daily News

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