Driving innovation for our customers and decarbonizing
At Daher, innovation serves a dual purpose: supporting our customers’ performance while contributing to the transition toward a more sustainable industry. True to its signature, “Pioneers by nature, innovators by culture,” the Group leverages its research, development and innovation capabilities to design the technologies, processes and services that will address the challenges of tomorrow.
Through its three innovation centers – Shap’in, dedicated to the design of lighter, higher-performance and recyclable aerospace structures; Log’in, focused on improving performance while reducing the environmental footprint of industrial logistics; and Fly’in, dedicated to the hybrid and lower-carbon aircraft of the future – Daher develops solutions that both enhance its customers’ industrial and logistics performance and reduce the environmental footprint of its own operations, products and those of its customers.
To achieve these ambitions, the Group’s three innovation centers rely on a complementary approach combining long-term research and collaborative innovation.
Long-term research and development drives large-scale projects, often conducted in partnership, to prepare the technologies and solutions of tomorrow over a 3- to 10-year horizon: next-generation materials, advanced manufacturing processes, automation, robotics, cobotics, and the digital transformation of operations and supply chains.
Open innovation, based on knowledge sharing and collaboration with the entire innovation ecosystem – customers, internal teams, industrial partners, SMEs, start-ups and academic institutions – helps accelerate the development and deployment of new solutions.
This 360° approach simultaneously addresses several strategic challenges.
Improving customer performance
- Developing lighter, higher-performing and more sustainable structures;
- Designing industrial processes that combine quality, competitiveness and production ramp-up capabilities;
- Strengthening supply chain efficiency and resilience through digitalization, data analytics and advanced management tools;
- Optimizing flows and operations to enhance overall performance.
Reducing the environmental footprint of industry
- Reducing the carbon footprint of products and operations;
- Developing technologies that support the emergence of hybrid and lower-carbon aviation, building on lessons learned from the EcoPulse project;
- Improving the energy efficiency of industrial and logistics activities;
- Promoting the circular economy and more efficient use of resources.
For aeronautics, the main challenge of the coming decade is to meet the environmental challenge. All our projects are part of this dynamic. Composites, and in particular thermoplastics, are real game changers in the world of aerostructures. They make it possible to produce, at a contained cost, parts that are lighter but also more resistant than the metals previously used. The gains are significant in terms of performance and limitation of the ecological impact of air transport. This is the key point of the structures of the future. Daher will do everything to maintain its leadership in these technologies, which allow aviation to resolve the double dilemma of competitiveness and reduction of environmental impact.
Dominique Bailly, Research Development VP