Aerospace and Defense 4.0

Key takeaways

• A&D executives face many challenges while pursuing digital transformation initiatives.
• Designing new products and business models remains the top challenge.
• The pace of technological change and a lack of technology know-how are the key technological and strategic barriers.
• Adoption of broad digital transformation initiatives that span the entire enterprise has been slow in many A&D organizations.
• As a result, only a small section of A&D companies seems to be truly benefiting from the opportunities provided by Industry 4.0 technologies.

A holistic path to digital transformation

Although A&D organizations are leveraging Industry 4.0 technologies, the opportunity exists to implement this more broadly across the enterprise, by focusing on four key areas: becoming agile, building new business models, ensuring close collaboration with the supply chain, and safeguarding data and intellectual property from cybersecurity risks. While there could be many potential pathways to becoming a digitally transformed enterprise, an industry player that leverages intelligent assets to create new products/services and platforms and increase customer engagement can be highly successful.

Industry executives should think of Aerospace & Defense 4.0 as an enterprisewide investment into driving long-term growth, innovation, productivity, and efficiency. Their approach should be holistic rather than focusing on small random acts of digital. Moreover, since these technologies could be much more sustainable and robust over business cycles, A&D executives should align top leadership, talent, and investments around digital transformation. Being able to completely leverage innovative, game-changing technologies could be a matter of survival in the increasingly “disrupt or be disrupted” A&D industry.