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From Black Hawks to digital threads: Lessons in digital transformation from aerospace engineering
Aerospace veteran Mike Ambrose shares his insights on pulling off a successful digital transformation in one of the world's most complex industries....
In an exclusive interview at IMD in Lausanne, Aerospace veteran Mike Ambrose shares valuable insights from his 38-year career at Sikorsky Aircraft, a company that builds military helicopters, owned since 2015 by US defense giant Lockheed Martin.
It’s no secret that pulling off a successful digital transformation is no mean feat. In fact, research from McKinsey shows that a staggering 70% fail to meet their original expectations. So, attempting it in a complex industry like aerospace can seem like a Sisyphean task. With its complex engineering systems design, long product life cycles, huge supplier ecosystems, and strict regulatory requirements, it’s a risky business.
As the former chief engineer and vice president of engineering and technology at Sikorsky, Ambrose led digital transformation projects including major upgrades to the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk, probably the most iconic helicopter in the US military, and revolutionary development aircraft designed and built in a digital environment.
Think digital integration before digital transformation
One of his key takeaways is the need to first shift the mindset from digital transformation to digital integration. This implies understanding data interfaces that define the design, build, certification, and maintenance of modern helicopters, as well as understanding which digitally connected interfaces would have the most impactful cost/benefit business case. This is not easy. You need a common process. The essential component is to build a single source of data. This does not necessarily mean creating a single data warehouse, but systematically defining the data sources for everything that will be digitally integrated. And not everything needs to be.
Ambrose stresses that in long-cycle industries like aerospace, where products can take decades to develop and last for decades more, the focus should be on building a “digital thread” across every stage of the product life cycle. This is an evolutionary process, where more comprehensive simulation and modelling is performed to enable a better predictive analysis of the product value chain. Usually, industrial manufacturing starts with the interface between design and build.
Using data to enable designing before you design, building before you build, testing before you test, flying before you fly, and maintaining before you maintain, essentially using attributed digital information to simulate a task before doing the task.
“X before you X”
Advancements in software simulation tools, AI, and digital twins in the last few years have enabled a different approach to complex systems: ‘X before you X’ modelling. Using data to enable designing before you design, building before you build, testing before you test, flying before you fly, and maintaining before you maintain, essentially using attributed digital information to simulate a task before doing the task. This is at the core of the industrial digital transformation and a way to derisk production in complex systems.
“At the end of the day, the ‘X before you X’ approach is scalable as the company matures its digital integration journey. As we get smarter with digital twinning, more of the product value stream gets digitally integrated. That is where bottom-line benefits are achieved for the total system and where customers believe they’re getting value for what they’re paying for.”
Leadership and system thinking
“The continuity of the vision, the strategy, the culture – it matters,” he says, “Because ultimately, whatever you do from a transformation standpoint is going to have to go across many chief financial officers, it’s going to have to go across many CEOs, many CIOs.” The key is to create a foundation that survives these inevitable changes in leadership, he adds.
But the challenges go beyond just embracing new technology. Breaking down silos is one of the highest hurdles in any digital transformation effort, something that is very true in traditional industries like aerospace.
At Sikorsky, Ambrose took an unconventional approach to tackling this issue: he empowered manufacturing engineers to think beyond their traditional roles.
In a typical aerospace environment, different engineers often operate in silos, with manufacturing engineers focused on building components and assembling the final product. However, Ambrose understood that these engineers, despite often being undervalued compared to more specialized roles like aerodynamicists, held important knowledge about how things are built.
“They’re the ones who have the best understanding of how all this data throughout the digital thread ultimately finds its way into building and assembling a product,” Ambrose notes. So, by broadening their roles and encouraging them to engage with the entire system, he empowered manufacturing engineers to become the crucial link connecting design, logistics, finance, and other functions.
In this process, the importance of leadership cannot be overstated. Ambrose points out that breaking through the organizational resistance that naturally comes with change requires strong, committed leadership from the top. “Ultimately, it’s that top-down commitment to say: ‘No, we are going to think differently, we are going to do things differently,’ that ultimately allows you to make progress. Leadership matters when you’re trying to do this type of transformation,” he says.
“By tracking improvements in quality, cost, and schedule, companies can make a compelling case to stakeholders and justify ongoing investment in digital initiatives.”
Measure at every stage
When it comes to leading these large, complex projects, demonstrating the tangible benefits of digital integration is essential. Ambrose says that at Sikorsky, success was measured not just in terms of immediate cost savings or quality improvements but also in long-term metrics that ensured sustainability.
“You have to have a combination of near-term metrics that show that we’re making intermediate progress and hitting milestones on our journey, but then always keep track of what the longer-term is,” he advises. By tracking improvements in quality, cost, and schedule at every stage of the project, companies can make a compelling case to stakeholders and justify ongoing investment in digital initiatives. At Sikorsky, for example, the expectation is that digital integration will lead to an improvement of at least 70% in quality and a 50% reduction in schedule.
Finally, Ambrose highlights the importance of understanding how every stakeholder involved, both inside and outside the company, connects and interacts. In aerospace, where he estimates that 70% of parts come from external suppliers, the success of digital integration depends on managing these complex relationships in a very structured way.
“There will always be new simulation tools, new materials, and evolving AI capabilities; that’s what makes digital transformation exciting. The key is to be deliberate about prioritizing innovation without falling into chasing shiny objects.”
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