Addressing the Aviation Digital Imperative

If any business, anywhere in our planet did not fully grasp the impact of going digital, COVID-19 Pandemic has made the message abundantly clear. All and sundry, be it family, friends, employees, businesses or government, are now connecting and communicating digitally thanks to the social distancing norms that came into force so suddenly.

The digital revolution, or the widespread infusion of digital technology into almost everything we do today, is perhaps the most powerful engine of change in the global economy. Across businesses and markets, digital innovation is disrupting time honored operational paradigms and spawning in a slew of new capabilities, products, services, channels and with it of course, new competitors and challenges.

Aviation industry has always been in the forefront and in fact, been pioneers of many of today’s leading digital innovations. Airline OEMS and part manufacturers have been using robotics and automation in their assembly lines for well over two - three decades now and today’s airplanes are prime examples of sophisticated technology adopted to best practical use.

While these OEMs and manufacturers have put in lot of efforts and pace into adopting innovative technologies and practices into their design and manufacturing processes, this unfortunately has not percolated in the same intensity into the aviation operation businesses worldwide that are actually tasked with utilizing and managing these assets once released from assembly lines.

As aircraft models, and their components become more and more sophisticated and increasingly connected, the enormous amount of data produced and captured through various sensors and advanced analytic techniques available have opened up an altogether new vistas of knowledge and insights around operations, product performances, customer, and partner relations.

In fact, these practices and paradigms have opened up new revenue streams that industry has hitherto never explored. To tap into these opportunities, it is imperative that the aviation organizations must invest more on exploring the idea of “Digital Thread” which forms the connected value chain of data that exists throughout the aviation asset lifecycle - from manufacturing to servicing to retirement.

The “Digital Thread”, is the natural extension of another popular concept of “Digital Twin”. The "Digital Twin" concept as we have seen, involves modelling a digitized version of a physical product (such as an airframe, engine or component assembly) by combining the product specifications, geometry models, material data, and associated simulation information, as well as the blueprints and related engineering information within the software systems.

The “Digital Thread” is then a natural extension of the “Digital Twin” concept across the product's lifespan, including all data flows across ideation, design, engineering, performance, manufacturability, and serviceability. This will therefore form the significant data thread that connects all of the organizations and environments with which a product/service interacts.

This is a clear imperative, but research points that this is not happening as fast as anticipated. Only very few aviation enterprises have fully realized these “Digital Threads” that impact the strategy and operations of multiple teams. The use of “Digital Twins” is however more prevalent, which today is more focused on improving operational efficiencies and cost optimizations using digital services and data rather than leveraging the nascent digital ecosystem to drive growth or achieve business gains.

Every day, the processes and practices within the aviation industry are becoming increasingly complex, data oriented and more digitalized. In this evolving world, it is this “Digital Thread” that is shaping up as that elusive foundation which can effectively stich together all the linked digital services and experiences, built on the product as a platform and generate potentially high value revenue streams and value-added businesses.

?With data and its management becoming both challenge and an opportunity, assimilating “Digital Threads” effectively into traditional models of maintenance business practices is going to be a daunting task.

The first and foremost activity here would be to identify and realize the value chain behind “Digital Threads”. This would be a key strategic imperative in Digital Transformation journey of the enterprise and would require close collaboration between businesses and IT world - an avenue for close symbiotic commitment.

Even though there is a clear technology component and system expertise involved in designing these systems, the insights and potential value adds for effective monetization must necessarily be driven by the businesses

Next question to answer would be who owns and manages these data – will it be a decentralized democratic control, much like the hugely popular blockchain tech – where distribution and management of data is coordinated among multi parties – or a single owner model where the “Digital Thread” is managed by a central entity.

With multiple industry players involved in the ownership of data, including OEMs, airlines and supply chain partners, a whole host of complexities must be managed.

It is clear that the key stakeholders in aviation industry are already aware of the need to collaborate across their business barriers. There are already industry forums working on evolving standards for digital processes that cater to data generation, collection and distribution, deciding on ownerships and managing IP rights, and driving these partnerships.?

In today’s world, responding to such digital possibilities and challenges have become an unavoidable necessity for successful business enterprises. It is imperative that they need to quickly find answers and move on into leveraging these “Digital Threads” that are fast becoming the core of digital revolution that is sweeping the aviation industry.

Although the adoption of “Digital Twin” can surely propel organizational efficiencies, it will undoubtedly be the “Digital Thread” that would catapult them towards new heights.

This should be the ideal strategic focus and a strong commitment to collaborate from business and IT is required to efficiently address the problem of managing data as a true collaborative service. Undoubtedly, the extent of these transformations necessitates visionary leadership, great IT partnerships and well thought out innovation roadmaps.