AI-Powered Supply Chain

Harness the capabilities of Artificial Intelligence to boost the potential of the Aerospace Supply Chain of the future

Supply Chain: a key lever for the Aerospace industry

The Supply Chain, considered here as the overall activities aimed at managing physical flows of the end to end industrial chain - procurement, logistics, production, distribution, after sales product flows, Supply Chain engineering and demand management - is today a key domain for the Aerospace industry as the associated stakes are critical for all involved parties:

Cash management: Aerospace companies must manage high value-added inventory to control their financial balance sheet. Moreover, since up to 80% of the value produced is purchased, procurement is key. In addition, logistics operations may reach higher cost, and raw materials or components markets demands are under strong pressure, for instance semiconductors following the Covid-19 crisis.
Quality and production management: the traceability and compliance with standards are strong constraints in Aerospace, while there is an increasing need to reduce cycle times in order to adapt production.

Gain in resilience in the supply and distribution network: the Supply Chain schemes of tier-1 suppliers are complex and international, and therefore sensitive to risks and hazards. In addition, market dynamics experience volatile demands and the industrial context (prices, regulatory constraints, customs, etc.) is evolving, which requires added network adaptability and responsiveness.
“Sustainable Aerospace”: the "green" challenge is at the heart of the Aerospace industry's concerns, with the need to decarbonise industrial products throughout their entire lifecycle from production to their actual use and decommissioning, both from a process and organisational perspective.

Incorporating Artificial Intelligence into the Aerospace Supply Chain: our vision

To meet these challenges, the Aerospace Supply Chain needs to evolve into a resilient, collaborative and adaptive organisation, capable of delivering on the customer's promise of on-time delivery and ensuring quality while controlling costs and organisational sustainability. At Sopra Steria, we are convinced that Artificial Intelligence is a necessary technology on the digital transformation journey of any Aerospace manufacturer wishing to overcome the challenges of its Supply Chain. Artificial Intelligence allows indeed management and Supply Chain practioners to make decisions faster, more accurately and whenever appropriate, even automatically.

To maximise its value, Artificial Intelligence needs to be integrated into the heart of all Supply Chain processes and systems. This requires a specific approach and methodology to coordinate these varied AI-based decision support systems: synchronise Artificial Intelligence systems within the company's internal industrial environment and its ecosystem ensures a real-time harmonisation of end-to-end decisions. This approach allows to combine short-term management and long-term vision, and to homogenise local optimisations and global vision.

Dedicated AI for the Supply Chain Management

Artificial Intelligence technology is a powerful means to meet the challenges of the Supply Chain of the future when specifically fully tailored to the Aerospace business. Our approach is based on AI decision support systems to provide the highest added value to the company and thus ensure a strong return on investment in the short and long term.

Our teams have identified 5 key areas in which Decision Support Algorithms based on Artificial Intelligence brings major added value to the Supply Chain of Aerospace manufacturers:

Planning

Get Resilient Planning Processes and improve stability by managing Uncertainties.

Risk Management and Operations Management

Maximize Decision Agility in Supply Chain Management with AI-based risk Management.

Operations excellence and optimisation

Improve Aerospace Supply Chain Management Performances by taking informed and optimized decisions.

Quality

Quality and non-conformity management

Ensure Supply Chain smoothness and production throughput by managing Quality and conformity of products with AI.

MRO operations optimisation

Optimize globally the end-to-end Supply Chain including post sales operations thanks to AI.

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How can you use Artificial Intelligence to meet your Supply Chain challenges?

To achieve such a transformation through Artificial Intelligence, Sopra Steria invests on two fundamental pillars of the Supply Chain of the future: developing powerful and specific Artificial Intelligence technologies, and focusing on dedicated Supply Chain Management use cases where it has determined that AI adds the most value.

Specific Artificial Intelligence technologies

Hybrid Artificial Intelligence

The decision support systems based on Artificial Intelligence must use a hybrid Artificial Intelligence, i.e. feeding upon both data (for example images, historical transactional data, etc.) and business knowledge of Supply Chain experts and practicioners. This hybrid Artificial Intelligence ensures indeed to end-users a substantial analytical traceability of the AI’s decision-making and reasoning process, reducing any black box phenomenon.

Platform

Platform for industrialisation at scale

In order to create maximum value for the Aerospace manufacturers, such decision support systems must be industrialised on a large perimeter. To do so, the notion of platformisation is at the heart of Sopra Steria's positioning in the field of Artificial Intelligence. By integrating AI services on a platform, deployment is all the faster and more sustainable over a larger business scope, while ensuring the cyber security of the target system.

An iterative approach to implement AI within IT legacy landscapes

Artificial Intelligence decision support systems can be grouped by families of algorithms allowing modeling, data and knowledge management, highlighting or creating value through massive amounts of information that human intelligence cannot absorb and comprehend. These algorithms take the form of Descriptive AI, Predictive AI, Prescriptive AI, or Autonomous AI.

Our insights

How can Artificial Intelligence support the performances of Aerospace Supply Chain?

Aug 3, 2021 | Benoit Spolidor, Maxime Claisse

Artificial Intelligence is having a positive impact on almost every industry. It improves decision making processes, creating fast and consistent operations management. In the specific field of Aerospace, our conviction is that to be fully efficient, AI must be developed with dedicated characterics. Sopra Steria invests on these features for sustainable and large scale transformation by AI for Aerospace companies.

Benoit Spolidor

Head of Artificial Intelligence, Sopra Steria

Contact :

Maxime Claisse

Artificial Intelligence Lead (Supply Chain & Optimisation), Sopra Steria