Automotive Strategy Drives Aerospace Innovation

The correlation between the automotive and aerospace markets holds more similarities than most may think and offers a valuable learning opportunity for the aerospace sector.

With its high demand and rapidly progressing standards, the automotive realm constantly strives for and achieves cutting-edge solutions to maintain continuous growth.

With the added pressure of geopolitical conflict, sustainability standards, and increased global travel, aerospace hasn’t faced these drivers until now. That’s why when a 50-year-old or older aerospace facility needs upgrading, the solutions that worked in the past simply will not address the objectives of today’s organization and its customers.

The many lessons that the automotive industry has learned through volume and iteration offer valuable expertise that serves as a bridge to other industries, specifically aerospace. One significant area of overlap lies in data, both sectors assess facility performance and equipment efficiency. These present an opportunity for the aerospace market, particularly as companies deal with aging facilities and equipment.

The challenges the aerospace industry face are unique but not without precedence. Specifically, the aerospace industry has a related counterpart: the automotive industry. With overlapping technologies and deeply connected customer needs, the two industries are kin.

The most significant difference is in their speed. Automotive’s fast pace and high volume enable the industry’s advancements, methodologies, and innovations to serve as a roadmap for aerospace facilities while driving down costs.

When tackling their growth and Research and Development (R&D) goals, aerospace organizations can leverage the forward facing approach native to the automotive industry to potentially cut years off testing and trials for future innovations.

The future of aerospace includes many drivers and innovations to meet market aspirations that already have seeds growing, such as supersonic and hypersonic capabilities and the expansion of drone usage across defense and transportation.

For example, American Airlines is already poised to have the world’s largest supersonic fleet by 2025, intending to carry its first passengers by 2029. Other widespread market initiatives and technologies are also instigating this rapid change, including alternative energy and automation.

The automotive industry has used these technologies for years, offering a vital roadmap hinged on tangible and measurable results that will benefit aerospace organizations looking to incorporate these technologies into their processes.

A perfect storm on the horizon

There is a “perfect storm” pushing innovation in the aerospace industry. It combines the rapidly rising impacts of globalization, geopolitical conflict, sustainability initiatives, and the drive for alternative energy solutions. These drivers are multiplied when matched with the rapid obsolescence of aerospace facilities and their equipment, typically resulting from the introduction of new and more advanced technologies and components, and the ensuing inability to meet the demands of today’s market.

In the context of the aerospace industry, where rapid iteration is uncommon and many facilities are decades old, obsolescence can significantly impact the design, maintenance, and operation of aircraft and their related systems.

To start, there is a significant drive for more air travel as populations and global interconnectivity grow. This is true across the board for individuals, organizations, defence, shipping and logistics, and other vital areas of aerospace.

Globalization and heightened international interconnectivity have reshaped how business is conducted at an individual and organizational level. For the aerospace industry, this fundamental reality impacts customer expectations as much as internal needs. The worldwide supply chain disruptions related to the COVID-19 pandemic still linger, while conflicts in Ukraine and Israel affect the aerospace industry on a near-daily basis. These conflicts result in restrictions, rising prices, logistical challenges, new regulations, and significant slowdowns throughout the entire supply chain. Their impacts also have lasting effects in the aerospace industry, where the complexity and high cost of aerospace equipment and products means progress moves at a slower pace than other industry counterparts.

This global interconnectivity influence also drives positive collaboration between organizations and individuals across borders. The aerospace industry is particularly primed to benefit from a global talent pool with diverse perspectives across industries and expertise

Darryn La Zar and Matt Guise ACS

to foster innovation and accelerate the development of the technologies it needs to meet current demands.

Meanwhile, the pace of technology hasn’t slowed but instead quickened. Key drivers and innovations in the aerospace industry are rapidly changing. Alternative energy solutions are a primary influence, driven by resource availability, customer expectations, and increasing regulations for sustainable business practices and products.

Take the Horizon Europe funding program, which provides approximately €95 billion in initiatives to support collaboration and research for innovations that tackle climate change. As awareness of environmental issues grows, so does the need to quickly adapt traditional products and processes to more sustainable options that reduce carbon emissions.

Worldwide, aviation accounts for two percent of all human-caused CO2 emissions and 12 percent of all transportation CO2 emissions, with a further 3.5 percent of non-CO2 climate impacts contributing to global warming.

In other industries where costs and complexity aren’t as high, these innovations can happen with rapid iterations, such as in the automotive market, where there are an estimated 1.47 billion cars in the world today. Because of this, the automotive market is targeting to meet net zero emission goals by 2035. As automotive’s progress in transitioning to decarbonized vehicles rapidly continues and reduces their climate impacts, the aerospace industry is primed to be responsible for a significantly greater percentage of CO2 emissions.

This innovation takes much longer for the aerospace market, requiring proven, repeatable, and reliable outcomes to ensure the product’s safety in the air, carrying valuable passengers or cargo. Initiatives similar to the United States Federal Sustainability Plan, which promotes these zero-emission targets, will undoubtedly look toward the aerospace industry as automotive tackles these objectives over the coming years.

Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) is the most prevalent alternative fuel solution for reducing emissions from air transportation. With chemistry similar to traditional fossil jet fuel, SAF acts as a drop-in replacement for current fuels but stems from sustainable feedstocks such as cooking oil, non-palm waste oils from animals or plants, or solid waste from homes and businesses, such as packaging, paper, textiles, and food scraps.

According to the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), over 360,000 commercial flights have used SAF at 46 airports, primarily concentrated in the United States and Europe. Compared with conventional jet fuel, 100 percent SAF has the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by up to 94 percent, depending on feedstock and technology pathways.

Electrification is another notable rising energy solution for efficiency and sustainability improvements in the aerospace industry, especially in commercial aerospace. Electrification allows for more efficient propulsion systems with fewer moving parts, helping to meet goals for reduced maintenance costs and increased reliability.

This amounts to component innovations such as electric motors, battery systems, and improved aircraft thermal management and power distribution. For example, the industry is seeing a significant rise in electric solutions related to vertical takeoff and landing. Electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing aircraft (eVTOL) are powered by electric motors controlled by computer systems that are either completely autonomous or piloted. In the height of their development and testing stage, aerospace organizations that can adopt solutions to speed up their time to market gain a serious competitive advantage.

The eVTOL aircraft market is projected to grow from US$1.2 billion in 2023 to a whopping US$23.4 billion by 2030, meaning this particular sector for efficient, sustainable, affordable, and adaptable transportation solutions will see a 52 percent growth rate in less than seven years. This process also demands that companies work with regulatory entities to establish standards of safety and the regulatory frameworks and certification processes needed to maintain those standards.

Some aerospace facilities are in dire need of updates to address today’s market needs. The obsolescence of previous aerospace products and systems impacts existing facilities, especially when many were developed over 50 years ago. If an organization’s facility is ill equipped to handle rising technologies and throughput needs, it won’t be able to keep up with its customer needs, let alone the competition. This is where industry experts can learn vital lessons from each other.

Unique challenges in aerospace

The aerospace industry is in a unique position that demands rapid expansion and innovation like never before. This results in an intricate and interconnected set of challenges for research and development testing facilities that haven’t seen this rate of innovation for decades. Navigating the dynamic landscape of costs, supply chains, and rapidly evolving technologies demands strategic awareness of those challenges to create viable solutions that last into the future:

Challenge #1: Calibration to today’s costs, supply, and technology.

When the supply chain is volatile, the ability to see the big picture and make informed, data-driven decisions is obscured. Advanced technologies result in further complexities of the costs associated with raw materials, dedicated equipment, and skilled labour, especially among longstanding aerospace leadership, engineers, and technologists.

Add unexpected supply chain disruptions to the mix, and. aerospace organizations constantly need to recalibrate their production plans and resource allocation. These challenges are why improving supply chain visibility is the top priority for 55 percent of manufacturing-related businesses.

Challenge #2: Rate of certification.

Unlike other industries, such as the automotive market, where certification processes are streamlined due to their frequency, certification of aerospace products is a time consuming and intricate process hinged on stringent safety and performance standards. There is no room for error in any testing or manufacturing process, but this is especially true of the aerospace industry. Achieving regulatory approval can significantly impact time to market for new aircraft and related technologies.

Furthermore, new technologies such as electric propulsion or autonomous systems require evaluation and structuring of their certification processes. As they relate to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), these regulations and subsequent certification processes simply do not exist in step with the innovations and technologies being adapted, such as electrification or alternative fuels. With the effort to get to market quickly, eVTOL companies are working closely with the FAA to help expedite and shape the regulations to meet industry objectives.

Challenge #3: Throughput demands.

Air travel and transportation are growing at a rate that current aerospace facilities cannot keep up with. A record 4.7 billion passengers are expected to fly worldwide in 2024. Geopolitical unrest continues to drive global defence. Air freight capacities have recovered since the COVID-19 pandemic, yet global inflation and heightened demand suggest further demand pressures are around the corner.

Challenge #4: Quickly changing regulations.

When a market faces rapid innovation, regulations are not in place to address new evolutions until testing and development begin. Safety standards for combustible engines are not the same for electrification, hydrogen, or other alternative energy solutions, let alone new methods or technologies that impact processes and controls. This is especially relevant in the Electric Vehicle (EV) market, where regulations are yet to be implemented.

Challenge #5: The combined complexity and fragility of aerospace test cells.

Aircraft components may carry a multimilliondollar price tag, yet their sensitivity is amplified by the intricate design and complex nature of their environments. Designing for this combination of heightened complexity and simultaneous fragility is no easy task. It’s even more challenging to design and maintain testing facilities that can accommodate diverse and specialized testing requirements. This demands a standard of precision and accuracy founded on expertise and experience that facilities with legacy equipment and systems may be unable to meet. Lack of precision leads to failures within production or testing. Any failure leads to delays, increased costs, safety risks, and tarnished reputations.

Eight vital areas where aerospace can learn from the automotive sector

Many challenges the aerospace industry encounters are familiar, especially for its automotive counterparts. With its long history and widespread demands across personal and business use, the automotive industry has a quicker rate of production and innovation. By incorporating the lessons learned from the automotive industry, aerospace organizations can enhance overall innovation and resilience during pivotal change.

1. An inside-out approach that focuses on core capabilities first, with an emphasis on front end planning, to define the acceptance criteria upfront. By working from the “inside out,” the function and capabilities of the test facility are always the top priorities. With this process, testing requirements and product goals drive facility design rather than the other way around. This enables a seamless design and build focused on centralized aerospace testing needs, including opportunities for modular design, allowing for the flexible assembly of components.

2. Safety and compliance standards founded on industry knowledge. In particular, recommissioning or retrofitting aging aerospace test buildings poses significant safety challenges for personnel, products, and test equipment. Many aerospace test buildings built over 50 years ago are still being used today. Meeting safety standards that also incorporate new technologies exacerbate that challenge. Automotive safety standards can inform aerospace about the impacts and risks of new technologies while also showcasing safety protocols primed to adapt to continuous change.

3. Data collection and analysis to empower decision making at every level. Data collection is the primary objective of any testing facility. The automotive industry has pioneered software and systems that strategically break down that data, analyze it, and leverage it for informed decisionmaking for innovations, operations, and resource allocation. This is especially important in real-time data analysis during testing or production processes to deliver analysis to the operator or team upon completion of the test, rather than a separate analysis application or method.

These real-time insights arm aerospace R&D with the reports they need to make immediate, informed decisions to manage safety and regulatory compliance, test and validate systems or prototypes, optimize performance, detect faults or risks, and deliver ongoing predictive maintenance. Aerospace can adapt the technologies developed by automotive to enhance aircraft maintenance with predictive analytics, reduce downtime, and improve reliability.

4. Capable storage, power, and utilities. As alternative energy solutions become even more necessary, power and storage will be significant. In addition, widespread challenges, especially with solutions such as hydrogen that requires substantial controls to remain safe. Also, electric solutions, which have high flammability risks demand strict safety standards. The automotive industry has implemented significant strides in effective, cost efficient, and safe energy storage, power, and utilities that can tackle throughput needs. For example, the automotive industry has proven experience in optimizing resource allocation, such as minimizing costs and power consumption related to operations to be redirected to equipment, facility controls and systems when not in use. The industry has also embraced power regeneration technologies that recycle waste energy to greatly reduce costs related to storage while improving efficiency.

5. Heightened efficiency and throughput for testing and production. Nearly every industry works to enhance its throughput and production while improving efficiency. This is especially true when it meets the demands of increased air travel and transportation.

Lean manufacturing principles and customized equipment solutions adapted from the automotive sector can streamline similar processes in aerospace, minimizing waste and optimizing workflow without compromising quality.

6. Systems integration solutions. For any facility, seamlessly integrated systems guarantee that testing processes function efficiently and safely while improving time to market without sacrificing quality. Being first to market for automotive and aerospace industries can mean the difference between being an industry leader or a market follower. Support from a dedicated systems integration expert ensures these systems are built on subject matter expertise with broad market exposure to varying technologies and industry applications, skilled, disciplined project management, a proven process, and application knowledge.

7. Equipment solutions future-proofed for continuous growth. With its longstanding facilities and processes, it’s clear that the aerospace industry has room to invest in scalability for future growth, which also results in its current challenges. On the other hand, automotive manufacturers embrace adaptable, modular manufacturing tools that can accommodate evolving production and R&D goals. It’s important for aerospace organizations to invest in flexible, scalable equipment solutions, including nonproprietary equipment that remains flexible to adapting business and testing goals.

8. Committed, ongoing sustainability practices. The drive for improved sustainability isn’t going anywhere. Automotive manufacturers benefit from frequent customers in widespread markets and dedicated experts driving innovation in the field. Automotive increasingly uses ecofriendly materials, processes, and energy solutions that meet industry and customer standards and cost and efficiency parameters. Following their lead, aerospace can also reduce the environmental impact of aircraft by exploring material and manufacturing processes from automotive experts aligned with similar technologies.

Moving forward

Preparation and planning are the keys to surviving a perfect storm on the ocean. Surviving the tempest facing the aerospace industry is no different. Empowered with expertise from the automotive industry, aerospace organizations can create a roadmap for facilities to tackle their production and testing goals. Inevitably, these industries will continue to change and proliferate, as will their challenges. Continuous learning is the only way to truly stay on top of that change. Leveraging our industry knowledge and expertise, ACS offers insights and solutions that address these challenges, using the knowledge from optimizing performance in the automotive sector to drive advancements in aerospace.

ACS designs, engineers, and builds innovative equipment, machines, controls, and facilities for industry leaders in markets including automotive, aerospace, and manufacturing.

The company is a systems integrator, helping companies maximize their facilities’ efficiency with systems designed and engineered to work together.

It combines knowledge of building design and construction with expertise and understanding of equipment, R&D and production test, process systems, automation, data acquisition, and controls for industry leaders who require high-performance systems.