In the highly regulated world of aerospace manufacturing, quality is not just a performance indicator — it is a foundational requirement. Manufacturers must ensure full traceability, eliminate defects and maintain rigorous compliance, all while accelerating production to meet growing demand.
To address these challenges, industrial leaders are turning to augmented reality (AR) in manufacturing to transform how inspections and assembly operations are performed. By overlaying digital information directly onto physical components, AR enables operators to visualize work instructions, validate installations and detect deviations in real time.
DELMIA Augmented Experience brings this capability to the shop floor through a scalable platform that combines 3D data, AI-powered inspection and flexible hardware deployment with integration into manufacturing execution and quality management systems. During a recent webinar with Aviation Week, as well as at a DELMIA user event, Robbie Parker, Senior Manager of Quality Assurance – Advanced Design, and Tanner Bruton, Quality Assurance Lead – New Technology from Textron Aviation’s Quality Organization, shared how they are leveraging this technology to modernize verification processes and improve manufacturing performance.
Addressing the High Cost of Non-Conformity
In aerospace manufacturing, non-conformities carry far-reaching consequences. Such as production delays, wasted materials and supply chain issues. To address these challenges, manufacturers are using technologies like augmented reality to detect and prevent defects early, enabling real-time validation during production.
The objective remains ambitious but simple: get it right the first time, every time — reducing waste, protecting schedules and sustaining compliance.
Improving Quality and Productivity through Innovation
Augmented reality delivers measurable improvements in both quality and productivity by transforming how operators interact with manufacturing data.
Through visual, data-driven guidance, AR enables technicians to execute complex tasks with greater precision. Digital overlays provide step-by-step instructions directly on the physical product, reducing interpretation errors and ensuring standardized execution. This immersive guidance directly contributes to higher first-pass yield and reduced rework.
In high-demand production environments, these gains translate into significant operational value. As shared during the webinar, teams are constantly balancing output acceleration with uncompromising safety and quality standards. AR supports this balance by streamlining verification steps while reinforcing compliance.
By reducing manual checks, shortening inspection cycles and improving task accuracy, DELMIA Augmented Experience helps manufacturers respond faster to market demand without compromising certification requirements.
Extending AR from Verification to Manufacturing for Greater Gains
Textron Aviation launched DELMIA Augmented Experience with clearly defined use cases, initially focused on verifications. One of the first applications focused on verifying anchor nut installations on fuselage sub-assemblies. According to Robbie, this approach delivered immediate and measurable value:
We started with verification use cases, which showed huge time savings right away.
This success validated AR’s role in Textron Aviation’s digital strategy and provided confidence to expand its scope.
As Dassault Systèmes leadership emphasizes:
Augmented reality allows manufacturers to merge the virtual and physical worlds to ensure every installation, every fastener and every configuration is validated in real time. This shift from reactive verification to in-process quality is a game changer for aerospace manufacturing.
Using a tablet, operators overlay the virtual twin of the assembly onto the physical part. The AR software highlights exact component locations, while artificial intelligence detects misplacements or incorrect hardware instantly. This visual verification allows teams to detect errors that would be nearly impossible to catch with the naked eye, helping prevent costly downstream rework while stabilizing supply chains and improving on-time delivery.
Integration with Systems
Recognizing that AR’s value grows when integrated into enterprise infrastructure, Textron Aviation invested in robust system connectivity.
We built some tools to integrate all of this with our manufacturing systems, applications and products. We built a conformity tool to keep all of our augmented reality files conformed to Engineering and Planning, trying to put all the control bands and everything in place, Robbie explained.
This connection ensures that technical documentation and digital work instructions or verification plans remain current and traceable within their larger quality ecosystem.
A Tool for Capturing Knowledge and Adapting to a Modern Workforce
As manufacturers grapple with labor shortages and an aging workforce, knowledge capture has become a business imperative. According to McKinsey, the proportion of manufacturing employees aged 55 and over has more than doubled over the past two decades, accelerating the risk of expertise loss as seasoned operators retire.
DELMIA Augmented Experience makes it easy to capture the valuable experience of senior operators while equipping a new generation of technicians with the tools that match their skills and expectations.
If we can incorporate the use of somebody who has 15 or 20 years of experience completing this exact operation and incorporate their tribal knowledge into the file we developed at first, that is a great way to disseminate that tribal knowledge to every operator who picks up that tablet down the road. They get that knowledge base from day one, said Tanner.
Scaling AR Across the Future of Manufacturing
Looking ahead, AR is poised to play a foundational role in the future of manufacturing due to its accessibility and scalability. Implementation cycles can be measured in months rather than years, enabling rapid validation of value on the shop floor. Once deployed, AR technology creates a digital thread between engineering, quality and manufacturing systems, ensuring data continuity and process traceability.
By combining AI-driven inspection, digital work instructions and real-time data integration, the technology enables a shift toward in-process quality, adaptive training and fully digitized operations.
As aerospace and other high-compliance industries continue to face workforce transformation, production acceleration and cost pressure, AR provides a scalable path to sustain excellence while driving operational agility.
Augmented reality is redefining how manufacturers approach quality inspection and assembly. By bringing together virtual twins, artificial intelligence and immersive guidance, DELMIA Augmented Experience enables organizations to move from reactive defect detection to proactive quality assurance.
The experience shared by Textron Aviation illustrates how this technology can deliver tangible value today, while also laying the foundation for the next generation of digital manufacturing.
To explore these insights in more detail and hear firsthand perspectives from the field, we invite you to watch the full webinar replay Delivering Right First Time with Augmented Reality.
DELMIA, a Dassault Systèmes brand, leverages augmented reality (AR) to transform manufacturing operations and empower today’s industrial workforce. Powered by the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, our AR solutions deliver immersive, AI-assisted work instructions, real-time insights and advanced inspection capabilities that reduce ambiguity, enhance accuracy and improve product quality and worker safety. By connecting the virtual and real worlds, DELMIA enables manufacturers to optimize processes, boost workforce productivity and accelerate onboarding, while adopting smarter, more intuitive ways of working—driving efficiency, quality, resilience and sustainable performance.
DELMIA Senior Offer Marketing Manager