Successful Technology Strategy Delivers Comfort in the Cabin Area

Scenarios and strategy development

UNITY began working on a new technology strategy for cabin area development in future Airbus aircraft in September 2005. The project was successfully concluded in May 2006. The project represented a major challenge in the area of CoE Cabin Cargo Innovation and Design. It involved the development of cabin scenarios that factored in the company's requirements. Beyond this, it involved the development of passenger profiles and the drawing up of a technology road map.

Tasks of UNITY

The point of departure for this collaboration was the desire for more transparency and goal- / product orientation across the division's research projects. Beyond this, the requirements of future client and user groups had to be taken into consideration. Research projects for selected programs had to be harmonized in terms of costs and of what they were expected to deliver.

On the basis of the new technology strategy, developed together with UNITY, a new framework was created with which the future could be forecast and the technologies that would play a role in it examined. From this the requirements for future cabin concepts could be derived. Building on this, UNITY developed general cabin concepts that took account of the company's strategy and of the needs of passengers in the cabin area. At the end of the project current research activities were evaluated with respect to the strategic goals of Airbus and future technology trends were identified. The results of this cooperation are a basis for more visionary, more demanding cabin concepts that can offer Airbus, airlines and future passengers the highest levels of comfort and efficiency. Airbus was presented with a range of benefits: support during the establishment of the innovation division in the area of cabin development, a precise alignment of current research activities with the company's strategic requirements, an exact evaluation of these activities based on the corporate strategy, and a better identification of relevant fields of innovative research.