Accelerating Development in Aerospace for More Urban Mobility

Business Lab

The next wave of aerospace is just around the corner, and a lot of that innovation is happening thanks to new, faster methods of development.

“What's happening now is that companies are trying to understand how they take the lessons from Agile software development and apply those to Agile product development,” explains Dale Tutt, vice president of Aerospace and Defense Industry for Siemens. With Agile software development, you can build software and test it relatively quickly.

“When you start talking about an airplane or an air taxi,” Tutt says, “it's expensive to build a prototype and test them, so you have to think about it in a different way and take a different approach. It really takes good program planning.”

This new type of product development, where planes and other kinds of air transport are developed faster than ever, still needs to incorporate safety as a top priority, which creates new kinds of challenges. These kinds of products are different than smartphones or other consumer electronics, Tutt explains.

“Part of it is driven by the safety and reliability you want to have—so that when you're flying around, you can safely operate the vehicle. There's a certain amount of durability and reliability that's built into the design of the product. The amount of investment that these companies or that an individual would make in buying one of these aircraft means there’s an expectation that it's going to last a while, and that you're going to have value in that asset. It's a little bit different than some of the consumer goods that we buy, and it's more expensive to repair them than it is to replace them.”

Balancing speed and efficiency of development is no easy feat when it comes to flying through the air. But Tutt believes we’re living through incredible times where things we can’t imagine now will soon become part of our daily lives.

“Whether it's high-speed aircraft and companies working on the next presidential hypersonic aircraft, or space exploration companies, or urban air mobility and air taxis—there are hundreds of startup companies that are going to transform how we move around large urban areas. And we’ll be moving around in a more sustainable manner because it will be electrically powered. Pretty cool stuff. It's been a long time since we've seen this much innovation going on in aerospace.”