Airbus digital transformation takes flight with APIs
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- Europe
Country
- France
Product
- Anypoint Platform
Tech Stack
- APIs
- SAP S/4 HANA
- Skywise
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Productivity Improvements
- Cost Savings
Technology Category
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - API Integration & Management
Applicable Industries
- Aerospace
Applicable Functions
- Discrete Manufacturing
- Procurement
Use Cases
- Manufacturing System Automation
- Supply Chain Visibility
Services
- Software Design & Engineering Services
About The Customer
Airbus is a leading aviation company known for its design, quality, performance, safety, and comfort. With about 25,000 daily flights, Airbus aircraft are taking off or landing every 1.4 seconds. The company is expected to face a significant increase in demand in the next 15 years, with the aviation industry expected to double its customers. To meet this demand, Airbus needed to significantly increase its aircraft production while reducing costs and improving efficiency in a sustainable manner. However, the company's legacy systems were not equipped to support this massive growth, necessitating a complete overhaul of its IT strategy.
The Challenge
Airbus, a leading aviation company, was facing the challenge of meeting the growing needs of the aviation industry, which is expected to double in the next 15 years. The company needed to significantly increase aircraft production while reducing costs and improving efficiency in a sustainable manner. However, Airbus's legacy systems were not equipped to support this massive growth. As a result, Airbus needed to revolutionize its approach to IT, transforming from a manufacturing company into a technology company. This required a complete overhaul of its IT strategy, including implementing an enterprise-grade API platform to enable digital transformation at scale, building a library of reusable APIs to speed up development time, leveraging APIs to unlock data in backend systems and expose it to suppliers, employees, and internal and external stakeholders, streamlining the supply chain to meet growing production pressures, and delivering self-service mobile applications to improve manufacturing team efficiency.
The Solution
To meet its goals, Airbus formed a team within the IT department called the 'Digital Accelerator,' with the mission to apply digital technologies to transform the way Airbus builds aircraft. One of the Digital Accelerator's first decisions was to implement Anypoint Platform to drive digital transformation and enable an API-first strategy across the organization. With MuleSoft, the team is building a library of reusable APIs which can aggregate data from multiple backend systems and make it accessible and consumable to deliver real business value to multiple stakeholders. Using MuleSoft, Airbus built an application that shop floor operators can access from their personal mobile devices to gain real-time visibility into parts and projects. Through APIs, Airbus unlocked data from cloud and on-premise systems - including multiple SAP systems like SAP S/4 HANA and Skywise, a customer big data platform - bringing this valuable data together to reduce time to market of new aircraft.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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