Advancing Cross-Organizational Collaboration in Aircraft Development

Collaboration is a key enabler for the development of modern aircraft and its systems and components. Because of the highly complex and integrated nature of many aircraft systems, effective collaboration requires well-organized, multi-disciplinary, multi-engineer, and multi-organization development processes. These processes require data-driven and computer-supported tools and methodologies. Collaboration may seem as simple as working together, thereby adopting standards and tools, and freely sharing data, information, and knowledge. However, in the development of complex systems such as aircraft, collaboration is not that straightforward. For example, aircraft engineers across disciplines and organizations commonly face challenges such as firewalls, data and tool heterogeneity, and intellectual property protection. In this paper, we review the collaboration challenges, describe how the EU-funded research project AGILE 4.0 addresses these challenges, and detail the application of, and experiences with, AGILE 4.0’s collaboration-enabling technologies.