David Ziegler: “New technology will reshuffle the supply chain”

There hasn’t been an OEM that didn’t bring up the topic during last week’s earnings calls: supply chain and labor issues. Airbus, Boeing, Raytheon, GE, Safran, all are affected by the shortages in labor and materials that disrupt the production flows of engines and airliners. Someone with a good insight into manufacturing processes is David Ziegler, Vice President Industry Aerospace and Defense at Dassault Systèmes. AirInsight discussed the current situation with him during the recent Farnborough Airshow. David Ziegler: "New technology will reshuffle the supply chain". 3D manufacturing, digital twins, robotics, manufacturing agility. These are all specialties of Dassault Systemes, whose consultancy, systems, and tools are widely used within the aerospace industry to optimize production and assembly. OEMs like Airbus, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Dassault Aviation all use the applications of Dassault Systèmes, but customers also include innovators and start-ups like Pipistrel, Vertical Aerospace, or Joby Aviation. Dassault Systèmes briefed customers on the latest insights into agile manufacturing on the fourth day of the Farnborough Airshow. On day 3, we sat down with David Ziegler, who is VP Industry Aerospace and Defense since January 2018. AirInsight – Labor shortages and supply chain issues are in the news almost every day. How do they affect agile manufacturing and the plans of for example Airbus to ramp up its production rates? David Ziegler – “Let’s first look at what has changed in the industry in the past few years. There are a few aspects to that. The first is the pandemic, which hit the supply chain very hard. Suppliers had already invested in the ramp-up of production and suddenly, production stopped. The supply chain was in distress and didn’t invest as much as should have been in order to forecast the next production rates.” “Now, we are post-pandemic and as you mention, the rates are increasing. But what we are seeing over the next ten years is really a change in technology. A change in technology, because of more electric aircraft and because hydrogen is coming. It means that the supply chain will be reshuffled because of the influence of new technology. It isn’t just that you need to produce more, but you need to produce more with different kinds of people.” More on that later. David Ziegler, Vice President Industry Aerospace and Defense at Dassault Systèmes. (Dassault Systèmes) “Second, what we are seeing right now is a lot of shortages, still the effect from the pandemic. You see shortages of chips, and electronic components coming from China, which makes ensuring activities more and more important. Your typical supplier base is going to change. This is another factor of complexity. For example, embargoes on titanium parts from Russia is one of the issues, as are chip shortages from Asia. By the time you are going to ramp up your supply chain on the other side of the world, you need to be able to flexibly source from different sources. That is one of the key drivers going into the future, it is about flexible manufacturing because your products are going to change but also because your supply chain is going to change.” AirInsight – How does this affect the way airframers will organize their assembly processes like automation, robotics, and Industry 4.0? Will robots be able to make up for labor shortages? Ziegler - “The same way in which OEMs have been doing the ‘virtual twin’ (like Airbus explained in 2019) of their products, now they are starting to do the virtual twin of their factories. To have more flexibility, you need to be able to run scenarios for the insertion of new technologies and new products. So before you are going to source the new technology and introduce it on your aircraft, let’s say a hydrogen tank, a new type of fuselage, or a new type of composite, you will need to run that into your virtual factory and make sure that you can produce at rates. Because you can’t wait for two years to test that technology (on the production line). That’s going to be one way to answer that technology challenge and add flexibility.” This is a quiet day in February 1989, when Airbus was working on the first A320 for Braniff in Toulouse. Back then, aircraft manufacturing used to be more manual and labor-intensive. (Airbus) “The other one is really on automation. If you look at how the final assembly lines have changed, it’s huge. If you were to go to an A320 assembly line in Toulouse thirty years ago, you would have seen a lot of people around the aircraft. A lot of knowledge and know-how of the people that knew really by hand how to make that aircraft. If you go to an A350 assembly line today, you are going to be mostly alone in the final assembly line. There is a tremendous level of automation, but that also means that the problems, when they are coming, are much more complex to solve because it is a different type of workforce.” “That brings me to the third point of the workforce of the future. It will have to be much more digital. The guys working on the shop floor are going to work in a different environment. It isn’t going to be very labor intensive as it used to be, because you will see a lot of automation, but you will see more people that need to solve digital problems rather than “real’ problems because of different supply problems, because of robots not functioning as they should be. It will be a change in the workforce from being very manual-driven to more robots-driven to do the work. In between are the so-called cobots, which essentially are robots working with humans to perform specific tasks.” AirInsight – This new technology requires a different kind of workforce. Are you confident these highly skilled workers will be available? There is a shortage of labor already now. Ziegler – “Right now, all of our customers experience labor shortages on the shop floor, they can’t find skilled people anymore. That is a challenge they need to answer. The way to answer that is to adapt to the workforce of the future. Guys that are coming into the labor market today are not wanting to do the same kind of jobs that were done before. It’s not about labor intensity and making your hands dirty, it’s about fixing the problem and finding solutions that give me the tools to new solutions to these types of problems.” AirInsight – This is where Dassault Systèmes comes in. You are constantly thinking about new solutions. How can you help the industry and prepare it for these changes? Ziegler – “In order to anticipate I talked about automation and the virtual commissioning of factories. Virtual commissioning not only works really well for robot integration but you also have workplace dynamics. You are looking at how painful, and stressful the different tasks will be for the workforce on the floor. It is also a key success to make sure that the workforce is happy and is willing to continue.” Testing manufacturing and assembly in a virtual twin before the first metal or composite has been cut: that's what the near-future of the aerospace industry is all about, says Ziegler. (Dassault Systèmes) “The other one we are doing is working with aerospace universities to make sure they are trained in the more digital products and that they are able to enter the workforce immediately. What we are seeing is a culture change, a culture shift, that OEMs need to take into account that the workforce of the future is digitally native. They no longer expect to fill out a sheet of paper or do something that isn’t assisted by new technologies or robots. They expect to be visually driven, to have tablets, and work directly in a digital environment.” AirInsight – What do your customers expect from you or ask you to do? Ziegler – “They are looking at us from different angles. It is something to optimize your current factory when you are Airbus when you are launching the A321XLR and at the same time you organize a ramp up and change your manufacturing assembly line with new technologies. They turn to Dassault Systèmes and say: ‘Can you de-risk this for me? Can you simulate the manufacturing process to make sure that, when I bring this new type of equipment and build it in my final aircraft, it is to be within reasonable tolerances?' We are supplying those tools to others too. We have got a massive deployment of what we call manufacturing operations management. We are going across their different sites, we are connecting all their machines directly to our operational management suite. That’s what we do with the big guys.” “What we are doing with the start-ups is that they are turning to us to organize their manufacturing operations. If you are looking for example at Vertical Aerospace or Joby Aviation, the manufacturing rates that we are talking about are massive. It isn’t the 600-800 aircraft that Airbus or Boeing are producing. It’s about smaller aircraft, but we are talking about rates that are more like that of the automotive sector. This is one of the reasons that Toyota is investing in Joby Aviation. Since we are actually partners to Toyota and other manufacturers worldwide, we are bringing that technology of heavy automation that is really important in the automotive and transportation sector.” AirInsight – Is producing at high rates really to be the problem for UAM manufacturers like Eve and Vertical, which both have huge backlogs of around or over 2.000 eVTOLs each? Ziegler – “It is going to be! I talked about the supply chain challenge for Airbus. But if we are looking at eVTOLs, if the market is coming, we are talking about rates that are more like transportation and the automotive industry. If you are looking at the problems in these sectors, if the manufacturing chain stops for more than one second, there is an alarm that goes straight to the CEO. It’s about rate, rate, rate. They need to get these products out of the door. In aerospace, it’s a much lower series, but the eVTOL is right in the middle. Production volumes are going to be much up.” The build rates of eVTOLs will be in between those of the aerospace and automotive industries. Dassault Systèmes is consulting Vertical Aerospace on how to set up its assembly lines. (Richard Schuurman) AirInsight – So what do you recommend to someone like Vertical Aerospace as it comes to building their assembly line? Ziegler – “As we are progressing in our relationship with Vertical Aerospace, they will have to start building the virtual twin of their factories of the future. Taking all the definitions of the virtual twin of their product and embedding that in the virtual twin factory to start looking at what are going to be the manufacturing rates but also looking at their supply chain. And looking at the modernization of their supply chain, which we call model-based systems engineering, looking at whether the supply chain will be able to answer the needs of the production that they have with all the quality along the supply chain.” AirInsight – That’s something you are working with them on right now if they want to be ready for production in 2025? Ziegler – “That’s the discussion we are having…”

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