"AREA 7.1.4.1 aims to ensure cost efficiency in air transport focussing on reduction of aircraft acquisition costs. Innovative solutions and technologies must result in lower lead time and costs of the aircraft from design to production, with a more competitive supply chain. The current proposal relates to topic AAT2008.4.1.1: ""Design Systems and Tools"". For this topic it is stated in the Work Programme that the proposal should makes contributions in the mentioned AREA 7.1.4.1 aim by: 1) Development of advanced methods and computational tools in the fields of structural analysis. 2) Concepts and methodologies for efficient multi-site product development in support of the extended enterprise. The project contributes to the mentioned costs / lead times reduction and a more competitive supply chain by enabling companies in the supply chain to seamlessly couple their analysis capabilities by thoroughly solving analysis model interfacing and by providing a definable combination of accuracy, ease of use and intellectual property protection. The project delivers advanced methods and computational tools for structural analysis. More specifically the deliverables enable coupling of finite element based structural analysis models of different origin and modelling fidelity, with no interaction during initial model creation. The coupling will be generic (linear, non-linear, static, dynamic, shell-to-shell, solid-to-shell) and automatic. It will be applied on 4 different industrial use cases. Several approaches will be persued in competition, making use of a common finite element research package. The best of class for a given application type will be implemented in a commercial grade finite element code. So models can be created independently by different partners at different locations, concurrently, with a minimum of communication needed. This results in an efficient multi site product development methodology in support of the extended enterprise."