Published in Australian Defence Magazine
While these technologies were designed at the Drive Technology facility in Neuhausen am Rheinfall, Curtiss-Wright is incorporating Australian Industrial Content in its turret drive solution. For example, all of the controllers and gyroscopes used with the TDSS, and its subcomponents, such as power circuit boards and chassis kits, will be manufactured and produced in Australia.
The success of this approach depends on the successful transfer of relevant technology and knowledge to local supplier partners. It also requires that those local partners make use of their own technology and capabilities and that a high level of bilateral cooperation is maintained between the parties during the project.
In addition, in order to establish an operational interlink between the Australian supply chain participants, including Rheinmetall Australia and Curtiss-Wright Drive Technology in Switzerland, a local Australian company will be selected and trained to provide program management.
Australian Supplier Partners
To achieve these goals, Curtiss-Wright is developing and sustaining a new partner network in Australia that will both create new jobs and enable Curtiss-Wright and Rheinmetall to support Land 400 Phase 2 with Australian industrial content.
Current estimates show that the local partner network will require and result in the creation of over 15 new highly skilled technical jobs. Curtiss-Wright has already undertaken an identification and evaluation process to select qualified local Australian Supplier Partners. Major milestones in the process have already been achieved. Initial planning visits to Australia, which began in 2018 and continued through the beginning of this year, were followed by the first delivery of TDSS sample PCB Boards and Chassis kits to Australia.
In the coming months, Curtiss-Wright will assess the parts received, and enter into a memo of understanding (MoU) with the selected suppliers, and contract negotiations will begin. After establishing the contractual baseline set, detailed knowledge transfer will commence. Curtiss-Wright’s TDSS experts will provide support and training directly to the new Australian Supplier Partners at their own sites. This on-site support phase is scheduled to run through Q4 2020.