Accelerating time-to-market for a defense OEM

European Defense System OEM accelerated time‑to‑market by 20% and increased revenue by 5%

Challenge

A leading European Defense System OEM was under growing pressure to accelerate program timelines while meeting the differing requirements of multiple national armies. Previous development cycles had been delayed and budget-intensive, making it difficult to ramp up production efficiently and respond to geopolitical urgency.

Development teams operated in silos, working with inconsistent and disconnected data across E/E architecture, requirements, and functional models. Because every military program came with unique specifications, platform reuse was rare, and variant complexity exploded. Instead of building modular systems, teams managed multiple overlapping projects—each developed in isolation.

This lack of architectural transparency and traceability across systems made it difficult to anticipate downstream impacts of changes. Even small errors could cascade, causing delays and last-minute escalations. Troubleshooting was slow, with engineers spending significant time manually investigating fault origins across different data sources.

At the same time, onboarding for end users—military personnel—happened late in the delivery cycle. Without early access to training materials or system logic, operational ramp-up was delayed, impacting readiness and pushing cash flows further out.

The OEM lacked a unified, interactive environment to track architecture, maturity, and issue resolution. Teams relied on static documentation and unstructured handovers, making it hard to steer projects based on facts. This hindered decision-making and increased the risk of missed milestones.

Approach

To accelerate delivery and manage variant complexity across different military requirements, the European Defense System OEM introduced SPREAD’s Engineering Intelligence Platform as a secure, on-premise solution. The objective was to unify architecture understanding, streamline requirement handling, and enable early onboarding of users—all without replacing existing systems or workflows.

The deployment began with a two-month setup and data ingestion phase. During this time, SPREAD integrated information from E/E architectures, system requirements, CAD files, functional models, and unstructured documents. This laid the foundation for a unified Product Twin reflecting cross-domain system logic and dependencies.

Over the following three months, the rollout extended to engineering, production, and onboarding teams. Each group gained access to role-specific insights embedded into their workflows—improving transparency, alignment, and decision speed across the board.

The following SPREAD solutions were deployed:

• Product Explorer: Enabled teams to explore system architecture, functional interdependencies, and variant deltas—cutting down development friction.

• Product Architect: Helped align diverse military requirements into a modular architecture, reducing unnecessary variants and rework.

• E/E Inspector: Linked system errors to their architectural root causes, allowing faster and more accurate issue resolution.

• Upskilling Coach: Delivered configuration-specific guidance to onboard soldiers before delivery—accelerating ramp-up and improving readiness from day one.

Impact

SPREAD’s solutions directly and quickly translated into measurable outcomes for the defense OEM:

• 20% faster time-to-market: Unified requirement and variant management enabled modular development and accelerated production ramp-up.

• +5% revenue increase: The Product Twin allowed military customers to train and prepare before delivery—creating cash flow earlier in the lifecycle.

• Earlier cash flows: Onboarding soldiers ahead of delivery reduced ramp-up delays and improved operational readiness.

• 60% faster issue resolution: Full visibility into system interdependencies enabled faster diagnostics and resolution of E/E errors.