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CMC Riding a Systems Integration Wave
CMC Electronics is aiming to more than double its business over the next five years from $160 million per year in sales to $400 million in part by expanding its recently established systems integration business.
Sales are already up 60% since 2001 when the company had turnover of about $100 million. The company’s workforce grew from 800 to 1,000 during that time.
Some of the targeted growth is expected to come from expanding existing businesses, and CMC also expects to make some additional acquisitions. In 2002, CMC completed its acquisition of Flight Visions Inc., of Sugar Grove, Illinois, and obtained an established company that designs and manufacturers HUDS, mission computers and control panels for fighter trainer aircraft, fighters and helicopters.
This helped CMC’s drive to become a supplier of integrated cockpits in civil and military aircraft, a new role for a company that made its name selling components such as satellite communications It has provided an integrated cockpit for the Boeing 747-200 and -300 for KLM in 1999, building on its expertise in flight management systems and communications equipment. Now there are several hundred 747s flying with the CMC integrated cockpits.
Then in 2003 it won the contract with Raytheon to develop an integrated cockpit for the T-6B, a digital alternative to the original T-6A now in service with the U.S. Air Force and Navy. This became the Cockpit 4000.
Jean-Pierre Mortreux, president and chief executive officer of CMC, says the Navy is interested in acquiring the T-6B version of the aircraft rather than the A model with a traditional cockpit featuring electromechanical instruments. This creates the potential for selling integrated cockpits on more than 300 aircraft that the Navy will start receiving in 2008. A prototype of the aircraft is now at the Paris Air Show as part of a world tour that has taken it to Singapore, Australia and the Middle East. It also has export potential.
CMC also is working on an integrated cockpit for the Korean Aerospace Industries Ltd. KT-1 turboprop trainer. The first version of this integrated cockpit is now being tested in a laboratory in Korea. In addition, CMC is supplying an HUD and a mission computer to the Pilatus PC-21, an avionics configuration that is very similar to the Cockpit 4000.
Here at the Paris Air Show, CMC announced it has been chosen for its first military jet training aircraft contract. Aermacchi picked the Cockpit 4000 configuration for its new M-311 aircraft. As with the other Cockpit 4000 configurations it will include a SparrowHawk HUD, multifunction displays, FV-4000 mission computers and other equipment.
CMC is additionally providing flight management systems and HUDs for helicopter cockpits. It has avionics equipment of one type or another on the Sikorsky Blackhawk, the Canadian Maritime Helicopter Program (the Sikorsky S-92) and the Eurocopter 135 and 145.
Mortreux says with additional acquisitions and alliances, CMC thinks it can bring even more capability to the systems integration arena in the future. Not that it wants to grow up to the point where it would be competing with some of its customers — the big systems integration houses of Honeywell and Rockwell Collins. —David Hughes
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