The Role Manufacturing Execution Systems Have in Driving Aerospace & Defense 4.0

As part of Solutions Review’s Contributed Content Series—a collection of articles written by industry thought leaders in maturing software categories—Matt Medley, the Global Industry Director of A&D at IFS, walks us through the evolving role manufacturing execution systems (MES) have in driving the aerospace and defense (A&D) industry toward the future.

While Industry 4.0 has been a mainstay of most manufacturing processes for some time, “Aerospace and Defense 4.0” has matured a little more slowly. However, A&D 4.0 is now seriously up and running—and that means the spotlight is on the vital role Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) must play to get critical data off the factory floor and into the systems that will unlock better production execution, quality control, and Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). It also simplifies the world of Defense Contract Management with fully integrated and automated workflows and helps solve various human capital issues, as we will further explore.

In 2020, IFS researched the aerospace and defense 4.0 maturity curve with surprising results. The polling results from a webinar attended by A&D manufacturers found that only 12 percent of nearly 150 attendees had not made Industry 4.0 an enterprise-wide priority, while most of the remaining manufacturing companies (68 percent) were still researching how these technological advances could help achieve their digital transformation goals.

The Evolution of Aerospace and Defense 4.0  

While the interest in 4.0 technologies was clear, the A&D market was still beginning the adoption journey. Bridging the chasm from interest to adoption would rely on positive results from early adopters prospering from deploying the latest solutions. 

Things have now taken off, though. The widespread emergence of Industry 4.0 technologies is here and now, and their implementation on flexible enterprise software platforms is helping unlock previously inaccessible financial, operational, and security benefits for A&D manufacturers. 

Enter Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) 

Enlisting Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) is now a prerequisite to unlocking these benefits. It has a hugely positive impact on production rate and execution, quality control, and Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). MES transforms inventory, production, and quality control activities to deliver efficient and compliant work execution by digitally tracking and documenting the end-to-end manufacturing process. These systems digitally capture each step of transforming raw materials into finished goods for documenting compliance, data-driven continuous improvement, and supply chain transparency in real-time. 

MES is a crucial part of the “vertical integration” of manufacturing by ensuring data is accessible from the shop floor to the top floor, continuously fed to real-time dashboards, and enabling control at every level of the manufacturing organization. From the supervisor on the shop floor to the director of operations to the quality systems, and even having that information rolled up to the C-Suite, everyone in the chain has real-time data for actionable intelligence. 

A&D Manufacturing Works to Tight Tolerances that MES Data Must Provide 

The devil is in the details for A&D manufacturers, which MES data must be able to provide. Unlike traditional discrete manufacturing of parts and assemblies, A&D equipment is held to a higher standard of accuracy and safety. Engineering tolerances for aircraft can be down to the thousandths of an inch, and this could be on an exterior panel! 

A&D MES support must have the ability to add additional 0.9 decimal places to manufacturing quality control. It’s this level of quality and precision that MES in A&D manufacturing are held to, and these incredibly stringent tolerances are built in for safety and mission effectiveness. Failure of either of these elements has considerable consequences in A&D wherever the equipment is operating, potentially causing catastrophic equipment failure to compromise mission success and even putting the warfighter’s life at risk. 

The Pitfalls of Integrating MES Data  

Having MES accessible as part of a core manufacturing solution offers significant benefits. First and foremost, separate MES is not conducive to providing the level of vertical reporting required in a modern manufacturing environment, nor can MES always offer the additional granularity and specificity necessary to operate in the A&D manufacturing sector. However, managing complex point solutions with heavily customized integrations to solve these issues and move information across an A&D manufacturing organization is time-consuming and risks soloing out data that would otherwise be critical to the overall production execution, quality control, and KPIs like OEE. 

All-In-One MES: From Design Through to Production and Engineering 

It’s the MES that tracks the daily operation level of your shop floor. Software with built-in MES functionality provides the essential digital backbone between the proliferation of smart devices and machines and core manufacturing planning software, seamlessly integrating this technology with the higher-level software used to plan production. This way, open, interoperable MES solutions enable complete traceability of parts, components, and projects—from design to production and engineering. 

As a prerequisite, MES functionality should enable CAD integration, robust, real-time data collection, and more sophisticated integrations through IoT and RESTful APIs, as just a few examples. It must also support dispatching and shop floor operation, improved production management and tracking, and quality management processes. Then, there’s the need to enable machine monitoring, performance, and KPI reporting.

Critically, instead of having to go out and get a different MES and then tie it all together with other manufacturing solutions, MES should be part of one software package that’s not just integrated, but all one fully connected piece “out-of-the-box.” 

Taking MES to the Next Level of Automation 

Once A&D manufacturers have established this connected base point in a single system, they can exploit new and emerging automation functionalities that unlock further intelligent insights and accelerate automation efforts within their business practices. From an MES perspective, this can include streamlining to improve product quality control and performance and using artificial intelligence (AI) and historical data-driven work schedules and job completion time to improve accuracy for technical productivity. 

Also, by combining IoT data with AI/machine learning, manufacturers can improve performance based on historical observations and transactions. 

Further A&D Benefits: Improved Defense Contract Management 

Another common pain point for A&D manufacturers is working in the strict regulatory ecosystem associated with the U.S. Department of Defense supply chain, with stringent reporting requirements that are difficult to manage manually. Here, the benefits of an all-in-one MES and ERP system are enormous. A shipping order, for example, would automatically go back to the ERP and then to the Defense Contract Management module for reporting and payment. Job done! 

Within Defense Contract Management, this streamlined approach between different operational areas of the business means A&D manufacturers can get automated reports done faster and more accurately—to ultimately receive faster payment. 

Further A&D Benefits: Human Capital Gains 

With MES, we aren’t talking about advanced robotics that are expensive, timely to implement, and require extensive change management within the A&D manufacturing organization. It’s changes like improved MES that optimize processes that have started to take hold a lot faster. A&D manufacturing, like many other industries, is experiencing a skilled labor shortage. According to Future Aviation Aerospace Workforce, the manufacturing industry needs 3.5M workers for A&D by 2026. This is where a connected MES/ERP solution brings human capital benefits. 

By improving processes with better feedback on MES data, instead of cutting staff, aerospace and defense manufacturers can upskill employees for higher-level work while the factory is automated. It’s a win-win from a change management perspective, as it’s easier to sell a process improvement rather than introducing an army of robots onto the factory floor! This upskilling approach is reflected by McKinsey research that highlights: “As the A&D industry evolves, re-skilling will be central to positioning the workforce to accommodate this evolution. Respondents indicated that the top three areas of investment in re-skilling are leadership (55 percent), engineering skills (45 percent), and cybersecurity (42 percent).” 

MES is a Key Stepping-Stone on the Evolutionary Path to A&D 4.0 

Getting MES right is a critical component of A&D 4.0—particularly given the unique requirements of the A&D industry. MES has been around for some time, but its capabilities have had to grow and evolve. It has had to keep up with new and emerging trends just like the rest of the A&D manufacturing software stack does, and that includes connection to lower-level equipment and the ability to export data for analysis and decision-making. 

For these very reasons, for MES to drive improved production execution, quality control, and OKPI management, it cannot sit in isolation from other manufacturing systems. MES must be an embedded part of a broader solution to enable manufacturers to unlock the benefits of Aerospace and Defense 4.0 and vertical integration of manufacturing.