Digital Transformation – A Continuing Journey
The changing landscape in which Leonardo, our customers and our end-users operate – impacted by the Digital Revolution, Industry 4.0, Multi Domain Integration and, more recently, artificial intelligence (AI) – means the ways we do business continues to evolve at pace, from what our customers need to how we deliver against those requirements.
At Leonardo, we’re undergoing a digital transformation, championed through our Future Factory programme which is people-led, process-driven and technology-enabled.
Empowering our people
The Future Factory will digitalise our core business processes, introducing and upgrading our enterprise systems and then enhancing their use through integration, providing Leonardo colleagues with one seamless technology platform through which to deliver against customer needs. This technology will ensure integrity of our data, as well as enable us to access and learn from our data in new ways by expanding the use of our Secure Cloud Data Environment. This will empower our people and enable us as an organisation to continuously learn, while developing innovative ways to boost science and technology in the UK. Furthermore, it provides Leonardo employees with the headspace to innovate, upskill for the future and overcome pain points identified within our business.
End-to-end digitisation
By digitising the end-to-end process from engineering to manufacturing, we are creating a digital thread and addressing how we best use data to drive decision making that is bolstered through predictive analytics and generative AI. This will enable us to identify a potential problem and act before it occurs, or use historical data to resolve an issue, based on past successes.
In Digital Factory we are building on the introduction of our Secure Cloud Data Environment with real-time data, standardised Manufacturing Reporting across our UK sites, giving visibility of production rates and pinpointing challenges that need resolution. With this same data, we have introduced complex data science products like our Automatic Fault Detection solution to provide early detection of recurring issues.
In Digital Engineering we have introduced Team Centre Unified (TCU) and have been improving the use of TCU through improved workflows. We are now building requirements for a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) and piloting a Requirements Management and Application Lifecycle Management tool. The strategy to integrate our engineering and manufacturing tools will lead to faster and more efficient routes to production, while simultaneously improving manufacturing quality and enabling a seamless engineering experience, leading to better consistency and pace in our processes.
Leonardo’s work on Future Combat Air Systems, such as the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), is a prime example of our commitment in this area. The programme requires Leonardo – as a founding partner of Team Tempest – to deliver game-changing technology with increased agility and speed, when compared to legacy programmes.
Meeting customer demands
By better exploiting the data collected by the Leonardo Digital Backbone, we will be able to deliver high-tech new equipment into the hands of the UK Armed Forces and its allies faster. The common data environment also forms the cornerstone of Leonardo’s broader programme of digital transformation across our UK-based business.
The Digital Backbone is connected to the whole lifecycle of our products – from design and development through to manufacture, into service and support – and unlocks tremendous potential for continuous improvement, automation and innovation. Having access to trusted data at the speed of relevance is an enormous asset for Leonardo and our customers.
