Insights on emerging technologies for products, manufacturing, supply chains and more
The concept of creating a “smart factory” by integrating IoT devices, digital twin technology, advanced data analytics and automation of the complete product lifecycle is gaining widespread acceptance. But what about extending digitization beyond the production line and its immediate environment to include heavy machinery, bulldozers, overhead gantry cranes, oversized trucks, forklifts, oilfield pieces, wheel […]
DXC Technology’s recent 2020 Technology Trends and the Future of Work makes it clear that technology will have a significant impact on the workplace in 2020. But how much of that applies to aerospace and defense companies characterized by sprawling manufacturing facilities staffed with thousands of employees working on assembly lines and shop floors? Artificial […]
Products built by aerospace and defense companies are highly engineered and sophisticated, which means they’re often complex. That’s not a bad thing. But they’re also complex in ways that are undesirable. Products and their constituent parts are tracked in dozens of systems –from design to manufacturing to maintenance — which can result in an average […]
Thread is amazing stuff. Imagine your clothes without it. You’d have buttons over here, cloth over there and the lining somewhere else. That’s not something you could easily wear! A similar situation is happening in the aerospace manufacturing industry. Leading manufacturers have their design data over here, their manufacturing data over there, and their maintenance […]
Aerospace and defense companies, under intense pressure to contain costs and deliver products to market faster, are finding that legacy product lifecycle management (PLM) systems just don’t fly anymore. Companies must migrate to digital-driven PLM, which can provide significant benefits at each stage of the process of designing, prototyping, manufacturing, maintaining, and troubleshooting aircraft. Digital […]
In the automotive industry, the challenges of designing, building, selling and updating a product has become more about software than steel, and all roads lead to digital-driven product lifecycle management (PLM). Perhaps no industry is undergoing more transformation than the automotive industry, with customers demanding personalization, connectivity, self-driving features and entertainment centers. In response, carmakers […]
This might be showing my age, but all this messaging around “digital this and digital that” reminds me of Douglas Adams’ great trilogy in five parts, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in which the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is “42.” To be fair though, it does seem to […]
Manufacturers minimise waste: all aspects of the process from cradle to grave are analysed for cost and process efficiencies. However, one of the greatest assets – data – is often overlooked. In a traditional model, most of the data such as CAD/CAM, development testing and production data are all put into deep storage once a […]
While reading, an article in The Manufacturer on Volvo CE, I was struck by just how much the trend to an as a service business model is progressing in the manufacturing industry. It has been around for some time with Rolls-Royce’s “Power by the Hour” approach but has now expanded to a much wider community of adopters […]
The Aerospace and Defense (A&D) sector is experiencing strong growth following multiple years of weak progress. Factors such as global tensions and aging fleets have combined with technological advancements, engineering innovation and superior product design to fuel this historic growth. The supply chains of these companies will continue to grow in complexity and size. As […]
