A Systems Approach for the Definition of Lean Workflows in Global Aerospace Manufacturing Companies

The aerospace and defense industry operates in an environment that has many regulatory requirements, driving additional challenges to the already required continuous improvement, global supply chain management and strong competition challenges. In order to deal with all that, these organisations attempt to update and develop new tools and management systems that can support the constantly changing way they do business. Most of them have recognised having too complex processes in order to adapt to that necessity, so they are making an effort to drive business process simplification and optimisation. Digital workflow tools and workflow management systems facilitate achieving business process optimization by partially automating them, but prior to that there is a need to carry out a process simplification and leaning exercise.

Process digitisation is a key component of the digital transformation and therefore workflow technology is recognised by numerous industries as being a crucial part of their strategic development. However the aerospace manufacturing industry lacks research efforts on how to automate their workflows with a prior simplification exercise. This research’s aim is the development of a framework for workflows optimisation in global organisations. Therefore, this study focuses on describing this approach, which takes several elements from systems theory, applying several systems thinking principles and tools. It is a systems approach applied to workflow design. It emphases on explaining how to extract a set of lean workflows ready to be automated from an organisation’s current processes, activity that requires understanding the bigger picture.