Aerospace & Defense

Digital & Analytics

Helping clients tackle digital challenges and build sustainable, scalable solutions tailored to the A&D industry

 

Across sectors, companies are going digital. Their wide-ranging digital initiatives help increase operational efficiency, boost revenues, enhance customer experiences, and navigate complex risk and regulatory environments. While aerospace and defense (A&D) has already launched many digital strategies, the industry faces unique challenges related to regulatory compliance and strict security protocols. We understand the challenges that A&D companies face in digitizing their business and operations, and can help them design and navigate digital transformation, from product design through aftermarket services.

What we do

Product Development and Design
In partnership with clients, we identify unmet customer needs and create breakthrough products and services to fill gaps in the portfolio. In addition to world-class design skills, we can provide insights on rapid prototyping, engineering issues, market-entry strategy, and portfolio optimization.
Manufacturing and Supply chain
We help A&D clients leverage digital capabilities and advanced analytics to reach new levels of operational performance. Our solutions are suitable for all products, regardless of volume or complexity.
Workplace productivity
Working with clients, we find digital solutions that improve productivity across functions, from the shop floor to the executive suite. As companies apply our proprietary analytical tools and enable greater collaboration among groups, their end-to-end processes will become more efficient and transparent. We can also help companies identify the right digital tools for tracking productivity and performance improvement.
Digital transformation
We help industrial clients design and deliver their digital transformations by leveraging new technological capabilities, such as deep analytics and the Internet of Things (IoT). For instance, we have accelerated business transformations by incorporating the cloud into operations—a step that is more critical than ever. We also help companies rapidly build new digital businesses from scratch, combining the resilience of an incumbent with the flexibility and speed of a startup. In record time, our clients have been able to launch new business models, redeploy talent, shift operations, develop innovative products, and improve productivity.
Aftermarket Services
Our capabilities help clients enhance customer management, including communications, information tracking, data sharing, and analysis. They also improve field service and spare-parts management in the aftermarket. With our support, clients can enhance their analytical capabilities to harvest the full power of data across SKUs, customers, regions, and business units. They can also develop data-based tools to help them understand customers’ aftermarket requirements, cost drivers, and economics.

Examples of our work

Digital transformation
We helped an A&D supplier transform its entire business model across operations, commercial processes, and support functions. We shaped their transformation by defining new use cases, finding digitization opportunities along the value chain, and identifying the potential for process automation. One major focus involved helping the company apply advanced analytics in multiple areas. The program included an agile organization redesign, modernization of the technology infrastructure, and a cultural transformation focused on digital adoption and change management.
Digital product development
We helped an aerospace manufacturer undertake a digital transformation focused on product-centered capabilities that delivered hundreds of millions in additional revenue. We embedded agile processes across the entire product-development organization, helped define and deliver new digital offerings to customers, launched digital sales tools, and introduced applications that leveraged advanced analytics to enhance engineering productivity.
Digital customer experience
A global provider of aerospace services launched a digital transformation to reinvent its capabilities and transform customer journeys. After defining the vision and roadmap, we helped set up cross-functional capabilities related to design thinking and agile processes. We also identified best practices for adopting digital tools. Finally, we helped the company attract digital talent and build the infrastructure and capabilities needed to track customer-experience metrics.

Featured Capabilities

QuantumBlack: We use data, analytics and design to help our clients be the best they can be.

Leap: Leap by McKinsey works with established organizations to imagine, build, and scale new businesses—and develop the capabilities needed to do it again and again.

Digital Labs: Digital Labs enables organizations to capture new value from digital—creating products, experiences, and businesses through new capabilities.

Digital Capability Centers: Our Capability Centers can help your company advance to the forefront of operational excellence.

Spendscape by McKinsey: Transforming spend data into opportunity. Spendscape is a Software as a Service (SaaS) analytics platform that gives you a comprehensive understanding of your procurement spend—with insights that lead to better decisions, more innovation, and growth.

Wave: Wave combines a proven program management platform with expert services that ensures companies execute large-scale transformation programs that deliver maximum impact, plus benchmark progress against peers.

Featured Experts

Aamer Baig
Helps companies use digital technologies to drive innovation, transform customer experience, and improve productivity, while also building organizational capabilities to sustain long-term impact
Florian Bauer
Helps organizations transform business operating models to win in the digital era; develops digital and analytics strategies and underlying technology platforms
Dilip Bhattacharjee
Brings the power of advanced analytics to improve the operational performance of companies in highly networked industries, resulting in greater efficiency and stronger financial results
Kevin Goering
Drives business value through operational transformations, tapping the productivity gains made possible by new technologies and advanced analytics
Liz Hempel
Supports industrial clients to navigate changes in supply chain, manufacturing, and procurement as a result of an ever-evolving geopolitical landscape
Mithun Kamat
Helps aerospace, defense, industrial, and technology companies with strategy, product, margin expansion, and technology-enabled transformations
Varun Marya
Global leader of McKinsey's Advanced Industries practice, advises companies on strategic questions and challenges related to technology and innovation in complex and highly technical industries such as automotive, industrials, semiconductor, and aerospace and defense.
Mark Patel
Advises clients across sectors on sustainability with a focus on climate technologies; leads client work across industrial, high-tech, and semiconductor sectors

Featured insights

Cyber security, illustration
Article
Creating a modernized defense technology frontier
-
Public and private investment dollars are fueling defense innovation. The prize? A $250 billion opportunity to build a modernized defense frontier by scaling technology, from AI to quantum computing.
Wave Abstract Innovation Technology Digital Network Blue Background with Defocused Particles
Article
Quantum sensing’s untapped potential: Insights for leaders
-
Quantum sensing is viable and could touch many parts of businesses. Here’s what leaders across industries should know.
An abstract video visualization of a data flow with a cascade of glowing numbers embodying the incessant flow of information in a virtual realm.
Article
The AI revolution will be ‘virtualized’
-
A tsunami of digital innovation is hitting product development. Will your organization surf that wave or be overwhelmed by it?
Female mechanic using digital tablet at work - stock photo
Article
The generative AI opportunity in airline maintenance
-
For everyone from repair copilots to clerical assistants, generative AI can improve productivity and ease labor shortages. How can airlines and related companies get the basics right?

How We Help Clients

Back to practice overview

Connect with our Aerospace & Defense Practice

Contact Us