Companies across a wide range of segments are adopting Industry 4.0 technology at a rapid pace, turning the next-generation vision of manufacturing—the Factory of the Future—into reality. Many of the advances in this transformation have been in highly automated industries, such as vehicle manufacturing. Conversely, the aerospace industry, with its staged approach to assembling aircraft, satellites and other products, has only just begun to investigate how Industry 4.0 technologies can improve operations, throughput, quality control and cost.

Whether it’s satellites, drones or commercial aircraft, aerospace production requires a combination of labor-intensive manufacturing and precision assembly of ultra-complex products. Compared to other industries, this workflow is unique. Airplane wings, for example, may require thousands of holes to be drilled with high accuracy in complex, fragile surfaces. In the automotive industry, it is estimated that close to 90 percent of drilling is automated, with only about 10 percent of drilling operations being done manually. In the aerospace industry, the situation is almost the exact opposite. And, since aircraft are produced under exceptional regulatory oversight for safety and quality control purposes, there needs to be detailed documentation of every part and every action as material flows through final installation, quality check and completion.