Across the aerospace and defense industry, delivery performance has become a board-level concern. Programs are under pressure to shorten development cycles, reduce late-stage rework, and demonstrate execution—not just plans.
What’s most telling isn’t the headlines. It’s how this pressure is translating into real requirements.
Over the past several months, a clear pattern has emerged across customer conversations, technical evaluations, and formal RFIs from large defense and aerospace programs. These engagements span different platforms, missions, and supplier ecosystems—but the requirements being asked for are strikingly similar.
That consistency points to a deeper shift: delivery pressure is reshaping how primes expect to collaborate with suppliers.
RFIs Are Converging on the Same Requirements
Historically, supplier collaboration requirements varied widely by program and business unit. Today, they are converging.
Across multiple, unrelated RFIs, the same expectations appear repeatedly:
- Supplier access to current, configuration-correct data without routine file export
- Authoritative systems remain authoritative (PLM and/or ERP)—no shadow repositories or duplicated logic
- Rapid onboarding for large, multi-tier supplier networks
- Granular access control by program, role, jurisdiction, and supplier
- Full auditability without slowing engineering velocity
- Support for non-CAD users on low-power devices
- Assumption of heterogeneous enterprise environments (e.g., Teamcenter, Windchill, Enovia, ERP variants)
These are no longer “nice to have” capabilities. They are being treated as execution requirements.
The implication is clear: primes are no longer optimizing collaboration for convenience. They are optimizing it for cycle time, control, and schedule integrity.
The Real Delivery Bottleneck Isn’t Design Complexity
When programs slip, it’s easy to blame design complexity or manufacturing constraints. In practice, many delays originate earlier—at the boundary between engineering intent and the supplier network.
Common failure modes surface repeatedly:
- Suppliers working from the wrong revision or configuration
- Manual packaging and re-packaging of 3D data—often including surrogate geometry, simplified solids, or convex hulls created to manage IP risk
- Long delays waiting for access to updated designs
- Over-reliance on file transfer as the collaboration backbone
- Late discovery of manufacturability, tooling, or serviceability issues
These manual steps are often repeated for every revision, with outcomes that vary depending on who performs the work and when, introducing inconsistency even before suppliers begin their tasks.
Each issue adds friction. Together, they compound into missed milestones, misalignment across multiple suppliers, and rework that is difficult—and expensive—to unwind.
Recent RFIs suggest that programs are now addressing this problem directly.
From File Sharing to Controlled Access
A notable shift across these RFIs is a move away from file-based supplier interaction altogether.
Instead of asking how to send data more securely, programs are asking how to:
- Provide real-time access to authoritative data
- Preserve configuration control across the supply chain
- Reduce export-control exposure and audit complexity
- Enable deeper supplier engagement earlier in the lifecycle
- Scale collaboration without increasing administrative overhead
This represents a fundamentally different operating model.
Supplier collaboration should be treated as an extension of the digital thread—not as a series of disconnected handoffs.
What This Means for Suppliers
For suppliers, these shifts are already showing up—often subtly—in how primes engage.
Expect:
- Less tolerance for static file delivery and offline workflows
- Greater emphasis on accessing authoritative, configuration-correct data
- Earlier involvement in DFx, manufacturability, tooling, and readiness reviews
- Tighter controls around IP usage and redistribution
- Faster onboarding expectations, even mid-program
Suppliers that can operate effectively within controlled, real-time collaboration environments will be easier to onboard and maintain alignment with.
Those that rely primarily on file-based handoffs may find themselves becoming bottlenecks—even when their engineering work is strong.
What Primes Are Optimizing for Now
The language in these RFIs reveals a change in optimization targets. Success is no longer defined by tool adoption or feature coverage. It is defined by execution metrics, such as:
- Time to first supplier access
- Cycle time between design updates and supplier feedback
- Reduction in rework caused by outdated or misinterpreted data
- Ability to prove compliance without slowing teams down
- Speed of scaling collaboration across new suppliers and programs
These are the metrics that directly influence delivery, cost, and risk.
The Takeaway
The most important signal isn’t any single RFI—it’s how similar they’ve become.
Delivery pressure is forcing a rethink of how engineering data moves beyond the enterprise boundary. Programs are no longer willing to trade control for speed, or speed for governance. They are demanding both.
The RFIs are simply the first visible sign of that shift.
For organizations that are seeing these requirements emerge in their own programs, the message is straightforward: supplier collaboration is no longer a peripheral concern. It is core execution infrastructure.
And increasingly, delivery depends on getting it right.
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