Innovation’s improvements on a selected study case from the Aerospace and

The French-German aircraft manufacturer Airbus has been selected as a study case for this subsection so as to discuss the enhancements engendered from its adopted innovative tools that we have already analyzed on the subsection 4.7.1.

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One of the Airbus innovative systems that have been mentioned previously is the Airman online solution that is primarily designed to ameliorate the firm’s PdM operations and is mainly deployed as an instrument for aircraft health monitoring in order to undertake efficient management of unscheduled maintenance, to provide real time recommendations and data and upgrade aircraft dispatch reliability. In other quarters, this technological solution allows the airline company to operate real time and optimized maintenance tasks and technical aircraft follow-up on the entire fleets in question. It appears to be the most reliable and economic solution among the technologies adopted by the corporation. The following table summarizes therefore the technical, financial and strategic advantages of Airman on Airbus.

Technical enhancements Financial enhancements Organizational & Strategic enhancements

Table 2: The technical, financial, strategic and organizational enhancements of the Airman Program on Airbus.

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Another innovative system that we have already mentioned was the open data Skywise platform considered as an end-to-end aircraft health management solution for the company’s operators and enabling the leveraging of large quantities of information so as to help the relevant airlines manage their maintenance activities more efficiently. Skywise seeks to become the platform of reference employed by all key aviation players to upgrade their operational performance and business outputs as well as to assist their own digital transformation. Airbus has therefore the goal to extend Skywise to become aerospace’s data platform of reference, with a service offering adapted not just to the aviation ecosystem but moreover to defense customers and helicopter operators. (Airbus Website, 2019). Skywise is considered therefore as a digital, hyper-connected and safe platform that permits users to optimize and forecast everything from engineering and maintenance to flight operations.

Thanks to leading-edge data analytics and highly advanced artificial intelligence tools, Skywise offers its customers the access to deep insights previously lost in the noise. Before the implementation of Skywise, these masses of information have never been shared on this scale. Indeed, an airborne A350 generates around 800 gigabytes of data on an average flight, about the same quantity generated by all the cars over the course of an entire Formula 1 weekend, and this number is constantly rising as engineering tools get smarter. (Euronews Website, 2018). Moreover, Skywise procures all customers with one single access point to their enriched information by bringing together to aviation data from various sources throughout the industry into one secure, cloud-driven platform physically hosted in Europe.

Typically, the more data is gathered from airlines or original manufacturers sharing it in the Skywise Core platform, the more the predictions and models are accurate. Additionally, data is anonymized so its sources remain confidential for a better sharing of the information and lessons. (Airbus Website, 2019). Skywise is therefore the most suited model on how crucial business ecosystem strategies are for manufacturers nowadays and how industrial data platforms can assist business ecosystem strategies. It is then believed that Skywise is the smartest move for Airbus to take; not only does it enable the aircraft manufacturer’s clients to gain value out of sharing their information with the company, but Airbus also benefits from getting data from customers and transmitting this back to its product engineers to enhance the quality of their aircrafts. (IDC Website, 2019). Table 3 illustrates the multiple benefits of Skywise implementation.

Technical enhancements Financial enhancements Organizational & Strategic enhancements

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Table 3: The technical, financial, strategic and organizational enhancements of the Skywise Platform on Airbus.(ICD Website, 2019) (Airbus Website, 2019) (Services by Airbus Website, 2019) (Euronews

Website, 2018).

As we have noticed based on the table presented above, Skywise platform has brought some significant advantages to Airbus within various aspects and such benefits are expected to evolve rapidly in the upcoming period as technological advancements continue to grow and its related tools get smarter every day. Still, it appears important to underline that along with Skywise, operators of Airbus aircraft will be in position to leverage the cumulative knowledge of the 20,000 Airbus engineers that have followed closely the performance of every single individual aircraft through its whole entire operational existence. Until lately, this deep reservoir of knowledge and expertise has been only available during the periods of development and flight testing across the aircraft Entry-into-service. (Airbus Website, 2019).

Airbus has still a huge vision for its Skywise platform and seeks to score higher objectives.

Indeed, Airbus’s long term ambitious for Skywise is to decrease operational interruptions by 30%. Since the best and most qualified engineers of the world concentrate currently on the huge amount of possibilities afforded by technology and innovation, Skywise is expected to be at the center of groundbreaking innovative systems for the upcoming years. (Euronews Website, 2018) For Airbus, this is only the beginning of a long successful ride towards better outcomes.

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4.8.2 Innovation’s improvements on a selected study case from the