OVER THE PAST few years Europe's aerospace industry has inevitably been preoccupied with the impact of defence-budget cuts and a depressed airliner market, but, as recession ends, so the priorities are beginning to change.

European aerospace research shows clearly that the new drive is for production efficiency and process improvement. For example, more than half of Europe's major companies are looking to cut lead times by at least 20%. A small proportion is beginning to look for cuts of 30%, or more.

It is also clear that a key part in achieving these improvements is expected to come from the focus on information-technology (IT) management. Around 70% of companies have already put IT strategies in place and many more plans are at the planning or discussion stage.

Equally significant is the amount of discussion taking place about the opportunity for IT outsourcing. Only a handful has taken the plunge, but more than half of companies are looking at the issue.

The trend fits well with the experience of Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC), says Tom Williams, deputy chief executive for its European operation.

Since taking off in the USA only three or four years ago, Williams says that IT outsourcing has been making its way across the Atlantic. The UK market has mushroomed, as CSC's own dramatic tenfold growth has shown. Continental Europe, too, is beginning to take up the baton.

At the same time, Williams identifies a change in the role of IT within companies. Two or three years ago, IT outsourcing was still essentially driven by the need to manage the technology. IT consultants were there to help a company navigate its way through a complex and fast-changing technology, but not necessarily to become involved in how the business was run.

Williams says that this is now starting to change, as companies begin to realise the potential value locked up in effective use of IT. "IT is now being seen as enabling business strategy rather than following and supporting it. We're starting to participate in strategic planning," he says.

Williams predicts that the next step would be to see IT providers invited to take an active role on strategic planning committees, but he adds that this is still a little way ahead. The growing links between IT and business strategy are mirrored within the CSC group, which includes the Index management-consulting unit, with its expertise in "process re-engineering" - a phrase it coined itself.

Williams points out that the aim of process re-engineering is not simply to look for incremental improvements and upgrades, but to step back from a process and do some fundamental thinking about how the task is being approached. He argues that this, combined with IT, can produce radical changes in efficiency.

Early aerospace examples include the replacing of expensive and time-consuming physical mock-ups with virtual-reality modelling, or avoiding intensive windtunnel testing through computational fluid-dynamics. As aerospace companies worldwide "-lead the charge" to harness the potential of IT, Williams believes that these gains will be just the start. If anything, he thinks that Europe's aim to cut lead times by 20-30% may not be ambitious enough.

Source: Flight International