MRO AND SUPPLY CHAIN
India’s Tier-1 suppliers climb from build-to-print toward design authority
Machining contracts were the entry point; the value sits in owning the drawing, not cutting to it.
Aerospace Garage desk
Indian aerostructures firms won their first work on cost — machining parts to a European or American drawing. Two decades on, several are bidding for design responsibility, which changes the margin structure entirely.
The distinction matters commercially. A build-to-print supplier competes on price against every other machine shop. A design-authority supplier owns the part number and the aftermarket that follows it.
The barrier is certification capability rather than engineering talent. Holding design authority means holding the approvals and the liability, and few Indian firms have built that organisation yet.
Our read: watch which suppliers file for design organisation approval, not which announce new capacity. Approvals are the moat.
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