Klaus Richter

A large part of the learning-curve challenge is getting carbon-fibre production of the airframe and assembly up to speed in synchronisation with the supply chain.

In automotive you find a lot of visibility and predictable demand for the supply chain to enable them to have a very high utilisation of capacity and adapt early on.

Everyone was running like hell. by Klaus Richter

Everyone was running like hell.

That illustrates how enormous the development has been over time... by Klaus Richter

That illustrates how enormous the development has been over time and why we have to industrialize.

Imagine building a skyscraper with 30 floors and over $100 million in value. Then imagine you are asked to ...deliver a skyscraper every day. In terms of value and complexity that is what A350 production is, A construction company would go crazy. You would have teams working on the lighting, and one week later, you would have three skyscrapers behind them waiting.

For United Technologies it is basically one business unit with one challenge and if needed they can support it massively to safeguard their ramp-up, and they will.

With that strategic preparation, we are pretty confident we can imagine the exceptions and the weak partners but these will be very limited.