July 22, 2019 | Information, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security, Other Defence
With some aerospace and defense organizations lagging in the adoption of Industry 4.0, what can A&D companies do better to achieve digital transformation?
INDUSTRY 4.0 technologies could be the key to unlocking future competitiveness. There is a clear and compelling case for aerospace and defense (A&D) companies to leverage these technologies and incorporate digital transformation throughout their organizations. In a global survey conducted by Deloitte to assess the current state of Industry 4.0 adoption across manufacturing industries, 84 percent of A&D executives said they consider leveraging new digital technologies as key to market differentiation—yet only a quarter of the A&D companies are currently using these technologies and tools to access, manage, analyze, and leverage data from their digital assets to inform decision-making in real time.1
Industry 4.0-driven technologies can impact every company that operates within the A&D industry, from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to small suppliers. However, not all companies seem to be taking advantage of these technologies, whether for growing revenues or improving profitability. Designing new products and business models remains a significant challenge for most A&D companies, with 40 percent of the surveyed A&D executives identifying the establishment of new business or delivery models as the top challenge their organization faces as they pursue digital transformation initiatives.2
Furthermore, despite implementing Industry 4.0 technologies in areas such as factory manufacturing and supply chain, many A&D companies have been slow in adopting broader digital transformation initiatives that span the entire enterprise.3 This is because many surveyed companies in the industry note that they have not made Industry 4.0 a priority across the enterprise; rather, they have primarily invested in specific, focused technology implementations. Limiting the digital strategy to a few business functions may increase the risk of A&D companies being left behind in today's digital era. It is important, therefore, that companies across the industry understand and harness the power of new technologies to benefit from the opportunities of Industry 4.0 transformation. A&D companies, especially mid- and small-sized, could start small but scale enterprisewide to maximize the benefits of these technologies. Instead of viewing new technologies as an add-on to existing processes and practices, A&D executives should rethink how they do business leveraging those technologies. This report explores the lessons A&D companies appear to have learned in their journey in becoming digitally transformed enterprises and recommends how they could thrive in this age of Industry 4.0.
For the full text of this article :
April 12, 2023 | Information, Aerospace, Naval, Land, C4ISR, Security, Other Defence
The service for business opportunities monitoring will be limited in the coming days. This situation is beyond our control and involves a system migration on the government side, which makes access to information more difficult. We are currently working on a solution to restore the service. Thank you for your understanding.
September 24, 2020 | Information,
Joe Gould WASHINGTON ― The Pentagon's shared supply chains with battered commercial aviation companies will suffer if Washington doesn't provide that sector with aid soon, the Aerospace Industries Association warned Wednesday. The trade group released its recovery plan for the broad aerospace and defense sector as Congress has begun a fierce Supreme Court replacement battle, shifting attention away from passing another stimulus package to defray the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. But AIA President and CEO Eric Fanning suggested some aviation companies have little time to wait. “If the commercial side doesn't get some relief, you are going to see companies in the supply chain go out of business, and that will impact the defense side,” Fanning said in a teleconference with reporters. “We're going to see bankruptcies, consolidation, closures in the supply chain, and she of them are single points of failure.” The defense subsector, declared essential at the pandemic's start, enjoys steady demand from the Pentagon, which has accelerated payments to prime contractors and directed stimulus funds toward its suppliers. However, sagging demand for commercial air travel will fuel a $100 billion revenue loss in the U.S. this year, Fanning said. AIA's analysis concluded another 220,0000 civil aviation jobs are at risk beyond 100,000 already lost. The study and its recommendations were prepared by Avascent, Boston Consulting Group, and McKinsey & Company, combined with input from AIA member companies. Beyond any federal aid, the civil aviation industry, the agency said, can highlight the steps it's taken to make air travel safer; increase communication between original equipment manufacturers, prime contractors, and suppliers, and support flexibility in the supply chain if private companies offer balance-sheet support and share inventory risk. The report called for stable Defense Department funding from Congress, but also said DoD can relieve stress on the industrial base by accelerating procurements of systems and services, with a focus on suppliers with notable commercial aerospace exposure. DoD can also keep making increased payments against ongoing contracts as they reach development and production milestones. AIA also continues to advocate for industry reimbursements for costs incurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, as authorized by Section 3610 of the CARES Act. Defense officials have said they need roughly $10 billion, and that without added funding from Congress, the Pentagon would have to dip into modernization and readiness funds. AIA's call comes a day after key House progressives, Reps. Marc Pocan and Barbara Lee, demanded an investigation and public hearings into the use of economic stimulus funding for defense contractors, calling it a “Pentagon misuse of COVID funds.” The Pentagon, which reported its intent to Congress in May, refuted that characterization. When asked, Fanning said it was important for the Pentagon to shore up previously identified supply chain weaknesses that the pandemic might exacerbate. “This money was put into contracts, so the war fighter is getting something for that,” Fanning said. “But I think the important thing is the critical nature of this industrial base, not just to the nation's economy, which is the health and safety of American's citizens writ large, but also to our nation's security.” A larger obstacle to winning further aid for the sector is that Congress has deadlocked over continued stimulus funding overall. AIA's report proposed that the government establish an investment fund that would send government-backed capital to civil aerospace suppliers; subsidize the airlines' major maintenance, repair, and overhaul visits, and continue to payroll assistance to support employees. Fanning told reporters that AIA found bipartisan backing for the idea of a payroll cost-share program, but there has been no legislative vehicle behind it. “The real problem is there's no bill,” Fanning said. “Congress hasn't been able to come together with the administration and itself to get a bill in place.” https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2020/09/23/aias-fanning-civil-aviations-nosedive-endangers-pentagon-supplies/
September 17, 2020 | Information, Aerospace
Mark Pomerleau WASHINGTON — While the Air Force's new information warfare command has reached its full operational capability less than a year after it was created, leaders still have work to do to fully integrate its combined capabilities in a mature fashion. That assessment comes from Brig. Gen. Bradley Pyburn, deputy commander of 16th Air Force, who on Tuesday laid out a three-pronged criteria — deconfliction, synchronization and integration — for assessing the command's maturity during a virtual event hosted by AFCEA's Alamo chapter. The command combines what was previously known as 24th and 25th Air Force, placing cyber, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, electronic warfare and weather capabilities under a single commander. The first category Pyburn coined is deconfliction, which essentially means “do no harm.” Pyburn described the need to have situational awareness of the battlespace and understand what friendly and enemy forces are where, what authorities exist, what targets forces are looking at and what capabilities they have. The second phase of maturity is synchronization, which involves aligning all the capabilities and actions in the battlespace. Pyburn said if the command adds activity A to activity B and C, it will end up with a greater result, because it can change the timing and tempo of how the effects are delivered for maximum impact. Lastly, Pyburn described integration as the most mature aspect of where 16th Air Force currently is. This involves baking in planning, assessment, command and control, all the desperate effects and operations from the beginning. This is where the command really begins to break down all the stovepipes that previously existed with all these capabilities, a key reason for integrating and creating the new organization. “From a maturity perspective, where do I think 16th Air Force is? We're probably somewhere between deconfliction and synchronization. We've got some examples of where we approach integration but I think it's healthy we understand where we're at today and where we want to go forward in the future,” Pyburn explained. The command has created what Pyburn called a J9 to help with assessing maturity. The J9 would be plugged into real world events and exercises to help with those self assessments. In a generic example, Pyburn outlined what full maturity integration would look like. A mission partner requests support, which could be in the form of air domain awareness, finding particular targets or threats or ISR assistance. 16th Air Force, in turn, would be able to link that request with other needs, either in the same geographic area or in other areas of operations, pioneering what its top officials describe as a “problem-centric approach,” which aims to look at the specific problems the commands they support are looking to solve and starting from there. “[In] our problem centric approach, as we look to generate insights across all of our 16th Air Force capabilities, what we may find is that particular problem set is linked to other problem sets and we're able to focus on the root cause of the problem,” Pyburn said. Based on a raft of authorities from cyberspace to intelligence collection as well as the relationships built through other communities and organizations, 16th Air Force can look at the root cause of a problem and build from there. “We can build a community of interest, we can start to put mission partners together into [an] operational planning team and we can not only generate better insights against that root cause, we can start to look at how we can layer in effects at speed and at scale across all domains of warfare and give the options to the combatant commander and the mission partner as the authorities to go after that adversary,” Pyburn said. Pyburn also offered insight into the command structure of 16th Air Force, which has his deputy commander job along with a vice commander role. That latter job, held by Brig. Gen. David Gaedecke — who previously served as the lead for the Air Force's year long electronic warfare study — does more of the traditional operational, test and evaluation functions. In the deputy commander role, Pyburn said his job is similar to the director of operations. He comes up with the requirements in support of combatant commanders. “Part of it is, I may think I know what I want, but if I don't see what the art of the possible is, it's really hard to know what I want, if that makes sense. It's a little bit of a chicken and egg,” he said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/information-warfare/2020/09/16/the-air-forces-new-information-warfare-command-still-has-work-to-go-to-fully-integrate/