BAE Systems implements AI supply chain solution

Bristol-based tech company Intellium AI is supporting BAE Systems through an Innovate UK-sponsored project to reduce material waste and carbon footprint across the supply chain.

A novel artificial intelligence (AI) solution is set to be implemented to connect suppliers remotely whilst preserving supply chain data privacy.

Intellium AI is working with BAE Systems and other industry partners including Codegate, Digital Catapult, Maher and MTC on Innovate UK’s Manufacturing Made Smarter project, Inteli. The initiative forms part of BAE Systems’ Factory of the Future, a developmental facility which is developing and testing industry 4.0 technologies that will transform and enhance manufacturing for the future.

BAE Systems is working with UK industry to drive a digitally-led, affordable solution for Tempest, the UK’s next generation combat air system. The Inteli project is addressing a key challenge facing the manufacturing industry that relies on sharing complex and sensitive data between supply chain partners.

The Inteli project is targeting the manufacture of a prototype aircraft component produced by Maher, a Tier-1 supplier to BAE Systems using a novel manufacturing process.

BAE Systems’ Inteli lead Ismail Master, said: “Intellium AI’s privacy preserving AI solution seeks to enable our supply chain to safely and efficiently share real-time and remote insights to ensure that the aircraft product quality is right first time. By harnessing the power of accurate, secure and connected data in this way, we will be able to reduce the amount of manufacturing rework required, which directly links to savings in material waste. Not only will this drive time and cost savings, but, as importantly it supports the Company’s commitment to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across its operations by 2030, and across a wider supply chain by 2050.”

Kiran Krishnamurthy, CEO of Intellium AI, has previous experience with these challenges in the aerospace industry where he has used AI to overcome the amount of manual rework required in assembling a long range aircraft wing.

Krishnamurthy said: “Although the external organisations involved in the supply chain agreed that data should be leveraged to improve process efficiency, there were barriers in sharing data to achieve this. Concerns about data sharing are understandable when protecting Intellectual Property and managing data correctly is so important.”

Drawing from their experience, Intellium AI is developing a solution that generates AI driven supply chain insights, whilst preserving privacy, as business data never leaves the boundaries of an organisation.

Krishnamurthy continued: “Such privacy preserving AI technology is already used in other industries. For example, we all want predictive texting on our mobile keypads to be accurate to save time and effort, yet we don’t want our private messages to be accessed by any third party to train AI models. Privacy preserving predictive texting has been developed to address this challenge and is already in use in some mobile devices."

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