Flying high at the Paris Air Show

The prominent theme surrounding the Air Show was AI, AI, AI. From manufacturing 4.0 to space exploration – innovation is clearly at the heart of an aerospace industry open to fields of energy, digital technology and artificial intelligence. Notably, Boeing values the aerospace and defence industry at $8.7tn; and describes the market as “in robust health, with a strong commercial aviation industry, stable defence spending and the need to service all platforms throughout their lifecycle.”

Interestingly, last week, Capgemini was in the news having just become one of the first business partners of Airbus’ Skywise digital platform. With more than 80 airlines around the world already connected to Skywise, this new agreement forms part of the digital transformation of the aviation sector including its entire ecosystem. Visit our website for more information.

We continued the theme of innovation in our runway-side Chalet. We showcased several technology demonstrations including Andy 3D – a combined CAD system and video calling. Aimed at maintenance tasks, it supports the communication between technician and expert without the travel! Andy 3D can recognise identification tags, augment reality and support photographs with mark up, doing so alongside voice or visual communication. Developed by Capgemini, it is a platform agnostic application, and the latest version includes voice control headset. You can see it in operation here.

Capgemini also demonstrated how new levels of supply chain transparency, trust and performance can be achieved across your business network with the Dassault 3DX and SAP S/4 1809 Blockchain Demonstrator+.

Our demonstrator has several purposes; firstly, to create an environment where you can experience the value of blockchain in supply chain. The term blockchain is used to cover all related technologies from smart contracts to distributed ledger technology. Use cases range from digital passports, automation, product provenance, configuration management, as-build and as-maintained – the potential is vast. However, blockchain should not be seen as a replacement; it is an evolution of building on existing landscapes and creating new business processes beyond organisations’ boundaries.

Secondly, our demonstrator represents the complete lifecycle of data from conception to disposal. In Aerospace and Defence this relates to complex products that take years to design and have a working life of decades. During this time, they are maintained and reconfigured for different purposes of varying scales and complexity.

Finally, the message is about partnership, rapidly building representative scenarios on our Demonstrator+ using real systems. Proving value in a realistic and representative manner that is meaningful to our partners.

We thoroughly enjoyed demonstrating how the use of IoT and modern analytics connect people, products and business to optimise operations and improve customer experiences through the intelligent use of data. Interested in finding out more?

Author

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Martin Watmough

Imogen Garner

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