It’s time to invest in digitalisation

After a minor decline in 2019, demand for commercial aircraft production is expected to return to its robust growth trajectory in 2020, keeping production lines at aircraft, engine, and component manufacturers busy while highlighting the need for automation in the aerospace industry.

Automation has been commonplace in the manufacturing sector for decades and can now be found in nearly every sector of industry. Automated systems that reliably perform repetitive, standardised tasks continue to enable manufacturers to operate with greater efficiency. This is evidenced not only by speedier production rates but also aspects such as reduced factory lead times, more efficient use of materials, and increased control over product quality and consistency. And yet, compared to other advanced economies, the UK invests relatively little in industrial automation and robotics. With only 71 industrial robots per 10,000 workers, the UK is the only G7 country with a robot density below the world’s average. This lack of investment in automation is particularly apparent in the aerospace manufacturing industry which has been slower to automate its production processes over the last 50 years than other industries.

Traditionally, fuselages, wings, empennages and other major aircraft components have been manually assembled. However, current soaring demands for aircraft production volumes are beginning to offer opportunities for efficiency gains through automation. But aerospace and defence manufacturers are often unsure where to begin when modernising their aircraft production and assembly processes. They are concerned about ongoing costs, and worried that their products and processes are too bespoke to automate. Private sector finance can help relieve some of these pressures when investing in new technology by offering flexible financing solutions that are tailored to the needs of manufacturers.

Adept at adaptation

Manufacturers are applying lessons learned from the automotive industry and adapting them to the specific challenges faced by the aerospace industry. For example, manufacturers in the commercial airliner sector are adopting automated guided vehicles which can carry wing structures through dedicated workstations for machining and drilling by robots. Collaborative robots are also already in use in certain processes in the UK aerospace industry. With built-in sensors and vision systems, ‘co-bots’ work with people, lifting struts and spars, whilst the human operator performs other tasks. Crucially, rather than replacing people, robots are creating new types of jobs focused on their programming and effective maintenance. Evidently, there is a clear up-skilling opportunity where aerospace automation is concerned. However, UK manufacturers must be prepared to train their workforce if they are to unlock the many benefits of automation.

Another example of digitalisation in the aerospace sector is the introduction of cloud platforms. By using cloud-based, open IoT operating systems such as Siemens’ Mindsphere, manufacturers can connect their products, systems, and machines to collect, analyse and harness data from every area of the factory floor. Moreover, these operating systems enable aircraft manufacturers to analyse real-time digital data such as vibration indicators and quality analysis, in order to make them aware of alerts and impending faults that cannot be identified by humans. This kind of predictive maintenance allows aerospace manufacturers to spot warning signs of problems before they occur, thereby enhancing fleet maintenance.

Similarly, predictive quality through real-time data analysis, means that defects in a production batch can be detected before they actually happen. Sensors analyse the quality of every product and warn of the tiniest changes. Crucially, these changes are flagged while they are still within the range of acceptable quality and are not yet considered defects. Being alerted to these marginal changes allows aircraft manufacturers to solve the problem before an entire batch of aircraft parts is more seriously affected and has to be discarded. Next-generation aircrafts are themselves equipped with sensors which determine the condition of in-service equipment, allowing airlines to make proactive decisions on maintenance schedules and prevent unnecessary groundings and flight schedule disruptions.

Capture the digital benefits

As customers as well as potential providers of digitalised technology, machine builders play a crucial role in industry-wide adoption of new equipment. Not only can they capture the benefits of digitalisation for their own production processes, but they can create new product ranges that include the machinery as well as the digitalised technology and create new business opportunities by including sustainable financing in their offering. This creates new business models for equipment builders, and allows their aircraft-building customers to invest sustainably in new technology and equipment with the help of providers that understand the demands of their industry.

Machine builders engaged in the manufacture of machinery can leverage these benefits to drive sales, by integrating Finance 4.0 into their overall offering and helping aerospace manufacturers invest in new technology. Such finance arrangements tend to be offered by specialist finance providers that have a deep understanding of how the digitalised technology, and the aerospace manufacturing industry works. Such financiers are able to work with equipment builders to demonstrate how that technology can be practically implemented to deliver efficiencies to the manufacturing sector. As the financing arrangement can be an embedded component of the value proposition, machine builders are able to introduce their aircraft manufacturing customers to the latest equipment and technology and simultaneously present them with a financially sustainable method to invest in digitalisation. Machine builders offering an integrated financing solution to their own customers have the potential to enhance their offering and remain competitive. In other cases, the technology provider will refer its customer to one or more finance providers to fund a sale.

The advantages of investing in digitalised technologies in manufacturing are clear and manifold, but companies need the tools, the trust, and support to invest sustainably. In order for UK manufacturers to remain competitive in the new era of aviation, they must embrace the new technologies available to them while up-skilling their workforce. With new technology being introduced into the sector, new opportunities for cooperation and business appear, opportunities that machine builders and their customers can exploit to leverage the benefits of Industry 4.0.

https://new.siemens.com/uk/en/products/financing