Aerospace & Defense Technology - April 2024 - 3

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What the Aerospace Industry Can Learn from the Automotive Sector
The correlation between the automotive and aerospace markets holds more similarities than people think, offering a valuable learning
opportunity for the aerospace sector. One significant area of overlap lies in data - both sectors deal with assessing facility performance and
equipment efficiency.
For Tech Briefs' Expert Insight series, Darryn La Zar, Senior Business Development Director at ACS, provides perspective on how the aerospace
industry can update its approach to facility and test equipment real-time data monitoring with a focus on product life cycles, obsolescence,
and managing risk. La Zar also spoke with Aerospace & Defense Technology (A&DT) about the aerospace industry's need to embrace
open architecture software.
Aerospace & Defense Technology: What can aerospace engineers
learn from how the automotive industry manages performance
assessments of aging test facilities and equipment?
Darryn La Zar: Automotive engineers have
to design very flexible facilities from the start
because their life cycle is different. They don't
move to a new building every time they produce
a new vehicle or variant. In aerospace,
their volume life cycle is significantly longer.
Aerospace engineers need to look at
more updates over time to stay current with
regulatory and safety requirements over
the life cycle of an aircraft. For automotive, we employ what we call
an FEP or a front end plan.
It's a process that we've developed over our 30 years in business,
and it reduces timeline and cost estimations. It gives you a much
better target of where your funds need to be directed.
A&DT: What can aerospace companies learn from the automotive
sector's approach to data acquisition for test facilities and
equipment?
La Zar: Within the automotive sector, there's been widespread
adoption of off-the-shelf data acquisition hardware and open
architecture software. Within the aerospace market that has not
been the case.
There is traditionally a lot of proprietary equipment required
for data acquisition in aerospace. Whereas automotive
is constantly taking those technologies and opening up the
architectures. That's the basis that we develop off of. While
there was a time when it was necessary for proprietary architectures,
today we can achieve the same goals with off-theshelf
solutions.
The other trend is enabling real-time health data monitoring of
both the equipment and the building itself. If you can consistently
analyze updates based on historical data, then you can ensure both
are ready to execute as needed.
A&DT: Are there any new data acquisition technologies that have
been embraced by the automotive sector that the aerospace industry
can adopt?
La Zar: I think it's less about new technologies and more about how
they're being applied. For example, faster communication rates are
enabling deterministic real-time monitoring of data.
There's also a focus on establishing a more distributed I/O mechanism.
That is a challenge for aerospace because most of the testing
requires a significantly higher number of channels. Distributing
that I/O evenly is critical and can reduce costs.
A&DT: What are some of the factors that challenge the aerospace
industry's ability to update its approach to data acquisition in the
way the automotive sector has?
La Zar: Life cycle is a major factor. The life cycle of an aircraft is
significantly longer than the life cycle of an automobile. For example,
the current 737 airframe is roughly 57 years old.
Funding is typically tied to a specific program in aerospace
as opposed to being tied to research and development. Another
major challenge is obsolescence. For example, you may have a test
system that's required to be operational for 25 years.
As components change, it's very difficult for the supplier of
a component or subsystem to upgrade. Those upgrades are expensive
because the data has to be aligned and authorization is
required from the OEM.
A&DT: We're seeing more aerospace companies investing in the
electrification of aircraft. Considering the advancements the automotive
industry has already made, what can the aerospace industry
learn from their introduction of new research and test facilities
to develop new aircraft batteries and technologies?
La Zar: The learning can go both ways. While the automotive sector
has made more progress, they're still in their early stages as
well. The learning is going to be much more dynamic because electrification
for both aerospace and automotive can happen at the
same time and that's really important for both industries to know.
Overall, the biggest lesson aerospace can learn from the automotive
sector is related to regulation and safety. Safety really
is going to be identical in both, whether it's the current state of
electrification or how they both advance. Both are invested in
hydrogen and alternative fuels. There is limited regulation that
covers those specifics in detail. So understanding that and taking
industry best practices into account is critical. We're doing that
today for customers in both industries.
Watch the full interview with Darryn La Zar
Aerospace & Defense Technology, April 2024
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Aerospace & Defense Technology - April 2024

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