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Highlights
- Aerospace companies are facing post-pandemic recovery challenges, such as delays in production, stressed supply chains, and the need to extend the lifespan of existing aircraft.
- Rapid developments in emerging technologies, specifically generative AI (GenAI), are shaping the industry and helping businesses in the aerospace sector become future-ready.
- To navigate long-term trends and unexpected events, organisations must leverage new technologies, revisit existing strategies, and remain agile.
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Future-ready aerospace
Aerospace companies have invested heavily in technology to improve customer experience, expand operational productivity, and extend business collaboration along the value chain. These commitments are paying off, with companies now ready to build out their business from a position of strength.
Leaders in these organisations can take advantage of a powerful combination of advanced technologies. The moment has arrived to take action on their supply chains and bolster their maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) businesses. By doing so, aerospace companies can set themselves up for commercial success and move towards achieving ambitious sustainability commitments.
The aerospace industry is navigating a transformative yet challenging era, driven by the imperatives of sustainability, supply chain resilience, quality, and operational efficiency. With global passenger traffic recovering post-pandemic, companies in the sector are struggling to meet demand, as supply chain stresses cause delays in aircraft production. Defence companies are also facing similar supply challenges.
This constrained availability of new aircraft means MRO businesses must run their complex operations efficiently to keep existing aircraft in service for longer and continue to be profitable.
The aerospace industry is facing further challenges in progressing towards its sustainability ambitions. Consumers expect businesses to keep delivering on their net-zero targets. Many have made a strong start, investing in sustainable products and practices. However distant the 2050 deadline may seem, the scale of the task at hand is nothing short of a moonshot.
It is imperative that aerospace companies successfully navigate these challenges to earn the credibility to operate in a future-ready industry environment. They must be prepared to leverage every advantage to deliver on their business and sustainability commitments, and adopting innovative technologies is vital to strengthening business models.
A range of powerful tools is emerging that can help accelerate solutions to the biggest aerospace challenges. GenAI is poised to become a transformative technology across a wide range of industries and use cases. Alongside it, blockchain, AI, and quantum computing are emerging as powerful accelerators of innovation, especially when combined with the capabilities of digital twins, digital threads, AR/VR, and high-performance computing (HPC).
Advanced supply chains
The aerospace industry faces significant challenges across the extended supply chain—in both the short and long term. Companies must be prepared to innovate and change proactively as markets shift over time. They must also be nimble enough to react to ephemeral trends and unexpected events.
Being at ease with change and dedicated to innovation cannot be limited to one’s own organisation. It is a mindset that needs to take root across the industry ecosystem.
Enhancing supply chain visibility and resilience has been a key focus for the aerospace industry ever since the pandemic exposed within its bounds a hitherto unseen level of fragility.
That vulnerability persists to this day. Supply chain velocity is frequently too sluggish to keep up with orders. Meanwhile, longer lead times and laborious supplier collaboration across complex supply chains prevent aerospace and defence companies from serving their markets better. The result is a significant opportunity cost for the entire industry.
At a time when businesses need to impose sustainability values across their supply chains, all parties are experiencing increased material and labour costs. This is set against a backdrop of decreased confidence from aircraft operators that original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) can deliver consistently.
So, how can technology help enhance supply chain agility?
In product development, AI and GenAI can accelerate a ‘shift left’ supplier collaboration approach, building on digital threads and cloud-based engineering platforms. This leads to smarter component choices, reducing long-tail supply chain risks and costly redesigns. AI and GenAI can also be used to predict material shortages and swiftly source alternatives from tier 1 and tier 2 suppliers, optimising production processes without inflating inventory costs.
The MRO segment stands to benefit significantly from AI and GenAI-enhanced collaboration between MRO and used serviceable providers. By leveraging aircraft condition monitoring data—delivered by AI systems and blockchain technology for ‘back to birth’ traceability—businesses can more accurately predict acquisition costs and improve transaction velocity in assessing fair market and aftermarket resale values.
As long-term industry demand continues to grow, leaders must adapt their operating models to address emerging trends such as nearshoring and reshoring. This will require them to develop agile responses to short-term events and market shifts.
Order management can be improved through shared collaboration platforms between jet manufacturers, suppliers, and customers. AI-based delivery risk prediction—combined with cloud-based engineering design intelligence, AR/VR, and 3D visualisation techniques—can accelerate deliveries while hedging against supply-side risks.
In a changing manufacturing environment and with supply chain risks, quantum computing and HPC optimisation can enhance planning, scenario modelling, sourcing, logistics, and delivery decisions.
In the MRO sector, the combination of blockchain and generative AI technologies promises faster, more efficient search and discovery of both new parts and used materials. This not only helps maintain asset value and airworthiness, but also improves planning for the utilisation of scrap materials from ageing fleets in closed-loop manufacturing.
By embracing these diverse technological solutions, businesses can navigate the complexities of modern supply chains, balancing sustainability goals with operational efficiency and resilience.
The aerospace industry is at a crossroads and is poised for takeoff with tech-driven transformation. While there is unprecedented demand, supply chains and sustainability challenges threaten growth. Embracing emerging tech such as AI/GenAI, AR/XR, blockchain, and quantum computing will help strengthen and build resilience in supply chain, revolutionise MRO, and achieve sustainability goals. The time to act is now and we look forward to bringing all of these to life for our customers.
Enhancing MRO with technology
The MRO segment has long been the backbone of the aviation industry, protecting flight operators and owners from volatility in aircraft order delivery.
In the short term, MRO service providers are addressing supply chain and recruiting challenges, while keeping older aircraft and engines operating safely. In the longer term, strong predicted growth will drive MRO companies to look for mergers and acquisitions that help them scale up their capabilities in innovation and advanced technologies and improve their economic performance.
As supply-side challenges persist, MRO businesses—and the aircraft operators they serve—need to capitalise on increased short-term demand for their services.
By employing technology across multiple functions, MROs can maximise their capabilities without exponentially increasing costs.
● AI-driven customised maintenance programmes and repair services can be combined with digital twins to help MROs move away from costlier fleet-level generic OEM maintenance.
● MROs should look to combine AI-enabled systems with automated inspection technology such as robots and drones. This will help reduce turnaround time for repair recommendations, expanding the MRO provider’s workforce capacity. These systems, powered by advanced technologies, build on engine health prognosis information and paperless solutions adopted by repair shops.
● GenAI has the potential to help MROs augment their workforce with technology, reducing the time needed to research engineering and operational problems, troubleshoot them, and maintain records for owners and regulators.
● Further investments in wearable technologies can help MROs standardise training for technicians. While it is predicted that the future workforce will arrive ready to tap into advanced technology, MROs must commit to training and development to address the increasing risk of labour shortages.
● AI and industrial blockchains can help MROs strengthen their provenance and records management to overcome risks from counterfeit parts in the commercial MRO ecosystem and of returning unairworthy equipment to service.
When looking into prospective strategies for technology-enabled MROs, businesses are advised to extend their focus beyond productivity to asset and resource allocation in order to achieve higher profitability.
Tech-led sustainability
As advanced technology becomes more integrated into the aerospace industry, sustainability targets will become increasingly achievable.
Creating a net zero industry by 2050 is a bold ambition and the right one for the future of the aerospace industry. The scale of the task to decarbonise the global aerospace industry in such a short space of time must not be underestimated. The industry needs to increase the speed and scale of innovation and leverage emerging digital technologies if it is to achieve this ‘moonshot challenge’.
The aerospace industry is one of the hardest industries to decarbonise. Commercial aviation is estimated to contribute 2-3% of annual global greenhouse gas emissions.
The industry’s commitment to fully decarbonise by 2050 must be seen in the context of predictions that annual passenger numbers are likely to double in the same time frame.
In addition to the challenge of increasing passenger numbers, the industry needs to deliver sustainability in the face of multiple obstacles. Firstly, aircraft typically remain in service for up to 30 years, limiting the scope for rapid upgrades to a greener fleet. Production cycles for new aircraft have always been long and supply chain constraints are slowing them down even more.
Perhaps the most significant challenge of all is the amount of energy required to get an aircraft off the ground and keep it in flight for many hours. Finding alternative fuels or propulsion technologies that have sufficient energy density and are also cost-effective is a huge challenge for the industry.
Multiple smaller gains can add up to big progress on sustainability targets, and that’s where emerging technologies can help push aerospace forward.
AI and GenAI are powerful tools for the optimisation of flight operations. These technologies can improve flight paths, reduce taxi times, and boost overall efficiency. Specific techniques such as continuous descent landings, enabled by AI, can save 150 kg of CO2 per commercial flight, while reducing flight time by just one minute can result in savings of over 60 kg of CO2, research shows.
While sustainable aviation fuel, hydrogen-based propulsion, and electric propulsion technologies are still in development, digital solutions are accelerating their progress.
Blockchain technology is emerging as a potential solution to manage unavoidable carbon dioxide emissions. It is being explored for the creation of verifiable carbon offset marketplaces.
Digital twins and digital threads incorporating AI and machine learning algorithms are optimising aircraft development and manufacturing operations. These systems can quickly analyse thousands of different lay-up options in the manufacture of composite materials for aircraft building. Advanced technologies can also be used to monitor how much energy is used in the aircraft building process, resulting in time and cost savings, as well as reduced emissions.
Future perfect
To participate and compete in the future of aerospace, businesses need to leverage advanced and emerging technologies and prepare for a transformation in collaboration with aerospace and its adjacent industry ecosystem.
In summary, aerospace businesses must urgently revisit their strategy and tactical plans with a mindset of 'what brought you here will not take you there'.
The game-changing abilities of AI, GenAI, blockchain, and quantum computing make it a leadership imperative to revise roadmaps and strategies. Now is the moment to identify partners and solutions that can help companies build future-proof operations. Supply chain processes, MRO provision, and sustainability commitments should be front and centre in this journey.
Considering the shorter cycles of technology innovation and their ability to address multi-horizon challenges, companies will need to become much more agile. They will need better predictive capabilities, along with change adaptation abilities. Only by delivering on these imperatives will they be able to learn and continuously adjust to the increasing pace of innovation.
