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On the Record with
JIM DAUW, PRESIDENT & CEO, GKN SPECIAL PRODUCTS GROUP
Engineering Involvement & Faster Delivery
GKN Aerospace is working to integrate the Pilkington aircraft transparencies
business (once known as Swedlow), bought last year for $67.5 million,
with its own.
The combined company, which employs approximately 800 people at
half-a-dozen facilities worldwide, claims the world lead in transparencies
for military aircraft and second place in the civil market. The
transparencies business accounts for about 90% of GKN's Special
Products Group.
 "One
of the challenges we face is to bring two companies together which
prior to the acquisition were competitors for decades," says Group
president and CEO Jim Dauw. "Only 25% of acquisitions create wealth
for the acquiring enterprise," he says.
On the other hand, Dauw told Show News, "There's tremendous power
if we leverage each other's collective IQ."
Dauw is working to do just that. He cites the example of coating
technology from the former Pilkington plant in Garden Grove (Los
Angeles), California, which is being applied to F/A-22 canopies
being developed at GKN Luton.
Clean rooms and autoclaves are being installed at Garden Grove
to support the even more demanding (because of stealth requirements)
Joint Strike Fighter canopy.
"We're breaking new ground with canopies related to F/A-22 and
the JSF," he says. "We have to protect the pilot from the heat and
we have to protect the pilot from [enemy] radar. " The canopies
have to be able to resist rain erosion, and bird strikes, and to
be optically perfect, especially in the age of visual sighting for
missiles.
"And then there's weight," Dauw says. "It's not as easy as you
think." Customer Lockheed Martin, he says, is fully supportive of
the technology transfer efforts related to the two new fighters.
Both programs fit a general strategy to increase GKN's role in
engineering an aircraft's windscreens and windows.
"Instead of just taking the design from the customer, we work with
the customer so that the customer no longer needs transparency engineers,"
Dauw says. "We are actually generating the design for them."
—Rich Piellisch
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