Innovation has been firmly anchored in the DNA of FACC ever since the company was founded 30 years ago. Numerous national and international awards confirm the technological leadership of the globally active aerospace group. Just recently, the company received a very special recognition for its innovative strength, as part of its contribution to the Wing of Tomorrow project: Airbus honored FACC with an “Innovation Award”.
The “Innovation Award” was presented to FACC last week at the Airbus Global Supplier Conference by Dr. Klaus Richter, Chief Procurement Officer, Airbus. “I am particularly pleased that our innovative strength has been honored with the Airbus Innovation Award,” said Robert Machtlinger, CEO of FACC. “I owe a lot of gratitude to my dedicated team who, in close cooperation with the Airbus teams, developed a technically sophisticated and high-quality solution as part of the research and development project into new architectures for carbon wings set to improve the overall eco-efficiency and aircraft performance of next generation aircraft, within a very short development period.”
Wing of Tomorrow:
Top performance with maximum efficiency and manufacturing quality
FACC received the “Airbus Innovation Award” for its outstanding innovative performance in the development of a major component for the “Airbus Wing of Tomorrow” project. A key objective of the joint research project is to develop a composite aircraft wing that ensures maximum performance in terms of wing technology while maximizing manufacturing efficiency (faster, simpler and cheaper). The goal of the collaboration is to develop and integrate new production technologies for the wings of single aisle aircraft by incorporating new materials and processes that enable automated high-volume series production.
The new aircraft components must meet numerous requirements such as a high degree of maturity in production, lower costs and suitability for high-rate production. To this end, FACC has developed three demonstrators for the essential parts of a wing box lower cover. “The ‘Wing of Tomorrow’ project is of great strategic importance for FACC. It allows us to further expand our research network with Airbus and partner companies,” emphasizes Christoph Schöndorfer, Head of Innovation at FACC. Andreas Furthmayr, Vice President Aerostructures, adds: “In the Aerostructures segment, we place great emphasis not only on weight and functionality, but also on cost-efficient and highly automatable component production. The experience we have gained in the development and manufacture of wing box covers will enable us to enter a new product segment and expand our portfolio.”
