AI Could Help Aerospace's Engineering Shortage, Bottom Line

LE BOURGET—A shortage of engineering talent is vexing companies across the global aerospace industry. A small French company is betting that artificial intelligence (AI) can alleviate the problem, and it is taking its pitch to Boeing.

Dessia Technologies, a six-year-old startup based outside Paris, says the engineers of tomorrow will be augmented “by a knowledge-driven design process.” The 20-person company is one of 11 startups displaying their wares at the Paris Air Show here as part of Boeing’s Aerospace Xelerated initiative—an accelerator aimed at software startups “that can move the aerospace industry forward.”

The French startup uses AI to help engineers evaluate design options and flag mistakes. “We don’t remove the engineer from the equation,” CEO Pierre-Emmanuel Dumouchel tells Show News at the air show. “The AI is going to help them save time.”

Using the AI tool to assist engineers has “cut the design times by 30,” which equates to a “huge” return on investment, Dessia's Head of Business Development Ossian Heulin says.

For example, while it would take humans months to screen 1,000 different battery designs, AI can do the work in a matter of hours, he says.

The return on investment “could also be a 0%-error rate on their design,” which would eliminate costly product redesigns, Heulin adds.

Heulin also gives the example of “design-to-manufacturing” functionality for the AI tool, which would ensure a product could be manufactured the way it was designed.

The design and manufacturing processes can be separate, Heulin says, “[and] for humans to be able to take into account all of those different expertises [is] impossible. It escapes the capability of the human brain to manage."

But Heulin says Dessia's AI tool can run in the background to identify manufacturing constraints and recommend changes to engineers, who can then evaluate options.