Driving down product introduction costs - the contribution from people, processes, and CAE

All partners of Airbus Industrie have reacted to the ever increasing business challenges in various ways, from committing to form a 'Single Company' through to major internal cost reduction programmes. This paper describes one contribution towards ensuring Airbus Industrie proceeds to a commercially successful future, that of the Engineering Team of British Aerospace Airbus. The importance is stressed of improving cultural issues and working processes as well as the increasing use of Computer Aided Engineering 'tools' to ensure step change improvement in the costs and timeliness of introducing new and developed products such as the A3XX. Whilst much has been achieved, there is still much left to do!.