Thanks to solid foundations and carefully managed teamwork, the complex program with the Chinese industry that is behind Eurocopter’s latest aircraft, the EC175, has proven to be extremely fruitful.

On December 5, 2005, Eurocopter and HAIG (the subsidiary of the Chinese group AVIC II) signed an historic cooperation agreement which heralded the launch of the EC175 program. This agreement set in motion the development, industrialization and production of a brand new helicopter in the 6-7 metric ton class. Cooperating with an industrial partner 10,000 kilometers away is a risky move, but one was that was carefully planned for the EC175. Eurocopter and decision-makers in Beijing were driven by the same desire to develop this landmark helicopter, and its development costs were split right down the middle. Partnerships between Eurocopter and Chinese industry go back a long way. “We have been working with the Chinese for nearly 30 years. In the early 1990s, we signed a cooperation agreement to develop the light, single-engine EC120,” recalls Francis Combes, EC175 program director for Eurocopter. “Over the years we have forged a steady relationship with our Chinese partners built on trust, and these strong ties paved the way for this more ambitious project.”

Working Side by Side
Starting the EC175 from scratch required the French and Chinese teams to physically work together side by side in a multi-skilled work unit at the project’s outset. Working in such close proximity allowed team members to put names to faces and close relationships were forged between the French and Chinese. In 2006, over 50 Chinese engineers spent a year in Marignane – an important phase in the program’s development. The two nationalities worked alongside each other in a joint design office where any rough edges could be smoothed out before the program moved on its next step: the virtual multi-skilled work unit. “Working with the Chinese has required slightly more resources than we estimated at the outset, because we have five different partners in China and some of them are 2,500 to 3,000 kilometers apart. All the work between these partners has to be managed and coordinated,” Francis Combes explains. “We made trip after trip to China and kept a skeleton staff of between ten and twenty people in the country, depending on the stage of the project. Over short periods, we even had up to forty engineers working in China. We also set up multiskilled work units so that suppliers could come and integrate their equipment on site.” The immensity of China was obviously a culture shock for people coming from the West. But, in the opinion of the “old hands” who had experienced the Middle Kingdom during the 1980s, China’s incredible expansion over the last few years has considerably reduced any material difficulties that expatriates might feel.

Digital Mock-Up
Eurocopter and the Chinese industry have solid experience working together, and the combination of this mutual understanding along with the use of innovative solutions has allowed the partners to work together from opposite sides of the globe. To do this, however, exchange protocols and joint tools had to be introduced, and everyone involved had to become familiar with them. The cornerstone of this internet-based approach is the DMU – or digital mock-up. The DMU is a 3D virtual helicopter that is represented in its entirety right down to the smallest parts. CHRDI, one of the five Chinese partners working on the program, is the company responsible for centralizing all of the digital data on the Chinese side. This data is then sent to Marignane, where it is integrated in the DMU. A new and up-to-date DMU is released every week and is sent to every partner on the project via an encrypted data link set up between Eurocopter and its Chinese partners. “This is the first time that we have integrated a digital mock-up so fully in our working procedures,” says Francis Combes, who also points out that the “Chinese have made major investments so that they can work in this digital environment, which is new to them.” Finally, regularly scheduled videoconferences have also helped further communication between engineers and technicians from Europe and China.