The avionics repair, testing and fault-finding business is experiencing profound but gradual change as the aviation industry - known for its long business cycles - is being changed by its adoption of digitalised electronics, the technological movement which has transformed the much faster-moving consumer electronics industry over the past 25 years. "Aviation is poised to be the next big industry in digitalisation, and I can see the pace of adoption increasing," says Collins Aerospace's vice-president and general manager of avionics service and support Craig Bries. This major sea-change is having a particularly marked effect on the aerospace industrial sector devoted to avionics, the instruments and systems by which aircraft are flown and navigated by pilots and by which air traffic controllers on the ground are able to communicate with and receive information from aircraft in the air. Avionics units and systems are being transformed by aviation's now-ubiquitous adoption of digitalised electronics technology, according to Vipul Gupta, vice president and general manager of Honeywell Aerospace's Avionics Business Enterprise. "With time, avionics are getting smaller in terms of size, weight and power requirements, and there is a lot more complexity in a single card," he says.
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