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How digital twins are transforming aerospace and defense manufacturing
Insights from the Paris Air Show

Anne-Laure Cadène
Oct 7, 2025
capgemini-engineering

At the 2025 Paris Air Show, I hosted a panel session, ‘The enterprise digital twin revolution’, bringing together experts from Dassault Systèmes, Georgia Tech Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory, and Capgemini Engineering to discuss the potential of this technology for Aerospace and Defense (A&D).

In this blog, I’ll highlight some insights from the session (you can watch the full panel session here).

What is an ‘enterprise digital twin’, and why is it important?

First, let’s define an enterprise digital twin and why it’s important to A&D.

At its core, an enterprise digital twin is a virtual replica of an entire organization, encompassing its systems, processes, and assets.

Unlike traditional digital twins, which focus on individual products or components, the enterprise digital twin provides total visibility. This broader view offers companies detailed insights into the highly intricate ecosystems that define aerospace and defence manufacturing.

Deployed properly, a digital twin isn’t just a technological tool, it’s a strategic asset, enabling not just process improvements, but a transformation in how organizations operate.

The current landscape and challenges

“If there’s no intentional integration of capabilities, they quickly become points of friction.”

– Olivia Fischer, Principal Research Engineer at Georgia Tech Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory (ASDL)

We started with Olivia Fischer, who covered challenges in modern manufacturing and the role of academic research in solving them. She highlighted the lack of visibility in the supply chain and also argued that the A&D industry still responds too slowly to sudden shifts in demand caused by geopolitical events, for example.

Part of the blame, she said, lay with a lack of trusted, collaborative environments for secure data and model exchange, especially across supply chain tiers.

To address these issues, Olivia advocated for ‘digital continuity’, ie. better coordination between design, production, and supply chains, so that decisions and information can flow smoothly across multi-stage processes. Achieving this requires better integration of capabilities and the development of digital threads that run across the full product lifecycle and organizational boundaries.

The enterprise digital twin was the strategic enabler of this vision, offering real-time visibility and systems-level predictive insights. Finally, Olivia emphasized the need to invest in workforce training – both in academia and industry – to ensure teams are equipped to fully leverage these advanced digital capabilities.

The role of system integrators

“How are we going to enable the people using the tools? How are we going to change the mythology of the business?”

– Antonio Mazaldi, Director of Systems Engineering North America at Capgemini Engineering

Antonio Mazaldi spoke next, focusing on how service providers like Capgemini help bridge the gap between the potential of enterprise digital twins and their real-world implementation. He outlined the key levers of a successful digital transformation, starting with a clear understanding of business drivers, then aligning technology and organizational change to meet them.

A major lever, he explained, is the ability to map and manage data across the enterprise, ensuring the right information is available to support better decisions. He also emphasized the importance of empowering the workforce to benefit from digital twins, and so ensure they deliver for the organization, through digital literacy, training, and changes in how teams work, such as shifting from traditional waterfall methods to more collaborative, agile approaches.

Innovative tools, workplace adoption

“The next step of value in an industrial system, is that what we deliver is already proven in the virtual world”

– Enrico Sharlock, Senior Director, Aerospace and Defence Solution Experience at Dassault Systèmes

Enrico Sherlock closed the session by discussing how emerging tools can bridge the gap between the complex data and models involved in digital twins, and workforce adoption. He highlighted how augmented reality (AR) and computer vision on the shop floor are delivering visualizations of real-time information from the twin, and providing digital instructions, helping workers execute tasks more consistently, reducing errors and increasing production speed.

Enrico also expanded on the enterprise digital twin, describing it as a “system of systems” that connects product design, industrial processes, and operations. When paired with immersive, model-based environments, the digital twin becomes a powerful tool to help teams plan, simulate, and verify processes virtually, before they’re put into action.

What next?

“…doing digital transformation for myself in my own silo isn’t enough. Eventually, it will need to coordinate with the efforts of other organizations…to address the big issues”

– Olivia Fischer

After their presentations, I asked the panel what breakthroughs could change how we fundamentally approach manufacturing in the next decade.

Olivia predicted that artificial intelligence (AI) would dominate the landscape, not as a replacement for human ingenuity, but as a powerful augmenter. She pointed to AI’s potential to accelerate design, validate requirements, and extract valuable insights from vast stores of data.

Antonio echoed this view, especially emphasizing emerging ‘agentic AI’ as a game-changer, which could automate complex transitions across organizational barriers, such as moving a product design from engineering systems to manufacturing systems.

Enrico noted that, while large OEMs are investing heavily in their strategies, real progress will require greater collaboration across the supply chain. He also stressed the untapped value of human expertise, much of it locked in people’s heads, and the need to capture that knowledge so that enterprise digital twins can truly reflect the full complexity of modern manufacturing.

If you’d like to learn more, and see the short Q&A at the end,  watch the full panel session.