Promoted content: AMRC's Stephen Beecher on how digitalisation can boost aerospace productivity

One of the biggest challenges facing the aerospace industry is how to speed up production. There’s a huge industry backlog, with OEMs such as Airbus currently thousands of shipsets behind schedule. To have any hope of clearing the backlog in the future, the industry needs to more than double its volume over a sustained period. While Airbus reported strong performance in 2023 – delivering 735 commercial aircraft to 87 customers globally – the operating environment is ‘complex’, with its year-end backlog standing at 8,598 units. It’s not just Airbus: for the same period Boeing reported a backlog of 5,462 aircraft.

‘To recover from this position the industry needs to do more than build extra facilities and put more hands on deck,’ says Stephen Beecher, sector engagement manager for aerospace at the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC).

‘It needs to be more efficient with the resources available. We need to move towards technology supporting people and develop a smarter approach. Which means that one of the hot-ticket issues in the industry at the moment is rate readiness.