The aerospace and defense (A&D) industry has vast supply networks and diverse products that require the interoperable exchange of data to support a 21st century digital transformation ecosystem. With the increased adoption of digital engineering and the shift to models as the authoritative source of truth, these digital artifacts must be shared across organizational boundaries and used for many years.
Tools and data will no longer exist in isolation, so we must consider how each has a place in a broader “systems of systems” context. The broad set of use cases, focused on sharing, collaboration, and reuse, will be best achieved through interoperability, which is employing tool-agnostic approaches and standards for information exchange. There’s a need to accelerate the path to interoperability, and currently these capabilities are lacking and need to be addressed.
This document conveys these capability needs from the perspective of experts from aerospace companies that use and administer digital engineering software tools, explaining the anticipated needs and benefits.