Satyam to have 100 employees dedicated to Hawker Beechcraft projects

Hawker Beechcraft Corp. is turning to India for help with its engineering projects.
Satyam Computer Services, based in Hyderabad, India, will provide design, computer-aided engineering, analysis, product lifecycle management and other services for the company, Satyam said.
Satyam is establishing an offshore development center to manage the work. It will initially have 40 employees dedicated to Hawker Beechcraft projects. Within a year, that number will increase to about 100, Satyam officials said. Hawker Beechcraft recently used Satyam in a pilot project.
Hawker Beechcraft has job openings it is looking to fill in Wichita. The arrangement with Satyam will have no impact on the company’s hiring here, Turner said.
“We need extra talent to help us complete all the projects that need to be done,” Turner said. “It’s not an outsourcing kind of project at all. It’s purely to augment our capacity to get work done.”
Outsourcing of work — whether it’s engineering or the building of parts and assemblies — is a trend of the future, said JSA Research aerospace analyst Paul Nisbet. More and more, companies are turning to India, Russia and other countries seeking engineering and information technology assistance, Nisbet said.
In the U.S., “there is a shortage of skilled labor,” Nisbet said. “And they are cheaper overseas.”
After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the aviation and aerospace industries experienced a downturn. Because of that, some students avoided those fields and decided to go into a different profession, Nisbet said.
“Now when (companies) need them, we have to go overseas to get them,” he said.
04/07/07 Molly McMillin/The Wichita Eagle, US