Aviation and the digital factory of the future

A vital contributor to Europe’s economic growth and cohesion.

The aviation industry as a vital European economic growth contributor has three main challenges:

• survive the dynamically evolving COVID-19 crisis,
• lead a recovery plan for a more resilient sector, and
• accelerate the engagement in securing a more sustainable and competitive future.

Not to mention the top five aerospace sector challenges of:

1. Order backlog
2. Delivering on-time in full
3. Supply chain collaboration
4. Digital transformation
5. High-quality workforce development

Europe entered a new age some ten years ago, wherein it faced many challenges such as globalisation, a financial system in need of reform, climate change, and an increasing scarcity of resources.

Over the last ten years, Europe’s aviation sector has delivered substantial progress towards these challenges and has realised significant physical/technical, economic, societal, and environmental advances over the last 30 years. Changes have been the catalyst to some impressive performance improvements across many facets of aircraft operation. Examples of such are:

1. Wings and wingtips (saving fuel and reducing noise)
2. Efficient and quiet engines
3. Composite fuselage and tailplane (lighter, stronger, more durable)
4. Increased passenger comfort (individualised passenger experiences)
5. Laminar flow technology (reducing emissions)
6. Sustainable life-cycle approaches
7. Air Traffic Management (greater efficiency)

 

Amongst all of the above magnificent seven examples, economic evolutions in the shape of efficiencies around Air Traffic volume and network pattern, Optimised air vehicle technical and operations, and Industrial design & manufacturing have been key. The latter focused on Design for Excellence methodologies that have optimised aircraft designs and improved manufacturability and reliability. The rate and capacity of aircraft manufacturers have increased making aviation more affordable and accessible to new markets.

 

Indeed, industrial design & manufacturing has a huge challenge when it comes to digital transformation. The Factory of the Future, based on Design for Manufacturability and increased commonalities between design and manufacturing departments enables optimal combinations of machines, robotics, tooling, and supply chain management to achieve the highest production efficiencies.

Think about a digital transformation like this: in July 2020, an additional 113,000 new apps were published on the Google App store; making it impossible to imagine the amount of digitisation that will happen over the next decade, which might transform many activities that we currently do day-to-day. Back in early 2019, one of my senior coaches [a specialist in supply chain management] gave me my first interaction with digital transformation (whilst we working with a British Aerospace & Defence manufacturer); he enlightened me to the fact that in today’s business, the supply chain managers don’t ask you to improve any process – they want to improve the plan behind that process. Most plans that the clients follow are manual, and the huge challenge facing them is to digitally transform their manual plan.

But let’s be clear – is it digitisation, digitalisation, or digital transformation that is the key requirement.

Taking each in turn:

• Digitisation – the conversion of analog or physical information to digital format.
• Digitalisation – the use of digital technologies to enable or improve business models, systems, and processes
• Digital transformation – co-ordinated change efforts at scale, encompassing many facets of the business

For the latter, systems and processes can be found throughout all business functions, and a digital operating model will have been defined. Using more analytics and process automation to free up capacity, and providing critical information for strategic decisions – but for the ‘factory of the future’, digital work is required to be more prevalent across the business, with systems and processes utilised to not only drive revenue but also to help forecast future needs and respond quickly to identified gaps. This is digital competitiveness. The synchronisation between a digital operating model with predictive analytics and microservices architecture, is about re-thinking the technology footprint – to quickly take customers desires and feedback and transform them into actionable revenue-generating solutions.

So, what does good look like in the digital future factory?

What is your customers digital experience?

What activity behaviours are you looking to amplify?

What activity behaviours are you looking to greatly reduce or eliminate?

Are your systems and processes becoming obsolete?

Has it dawned on you that your current technology, capabilities, and behaviours that have long since been the source of your success, could be the source of your downfall if you do not implement truly sustainable change?

The plan you made 12 months ago maybe subtly muted. Has the time arrived for a re-think to aspects of your strategy? After all – your customers are your strategic inspiration.

In summary – your short-term plans should lead to changes in the long term, but all of the above is about evolution versus revolution.

Want to learn more….

 

0161 408 1430

https://www.tmlgrp.com

info@tmlgroup.co.uk