Ramping Up Defense Industrial Capacity Without Rebuilding the Factory

The defense industry needs more capacity and it needs it now

Geopolitical instability and rising defense demand are putting unprecedented pressure on the global defense industrial base. Manufacturers need to produce more, faster, while managing cost pressures, supply chain fragility and growing sovereignty requirements.

Yet much of the defense industry was designed for low volumes, short production runs and highly specialized manufacturing. Building a new factory can take four to six years. It is too long to address immediate capacity needs.

The priority is therefore clear: unlock more capacity from existing industrial assets.

Four Akkodis experts working with major defense manufacturers across naval, air and land programs share their perspectives.

Start with the capacity you already have

Before investing in new equipment or facilities, manufacturers need to understand how their existing production system actually performs.

Optimization has no limit. Throughput doesn't determine the potential for optimization; it changes its order of magnitude. You have to quantify, measure, and analyze before buying anything,

says Filipe Barbosa, Director of Manufacturing & Industrial Performance at Akkodis.

This starts with Value Stream Mapping (VSM) across production, logistics and supporting processes to identify hidden downtime and inefficiencies.

Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) then provides a consolidated view of availability, performance and quality.

The objective is simple: identify unused capacity before creating new capacity.

Applying proven manufacturing principles to defense

Defense manufacturing cannot simply replicate automotive production. However, selected automotive principles can be adapted to highly customized, lower-volume defense environments.

Sébastien Dubois, Manufacturing Process Director at Akkodis, previously worked on the industrialization of factories at Renault and Stellantis.

In one recent ground transportation program, the client needed a 30% capacity increase, but product customization meant cycle times could vary significantly between configurations.

Optimizing individual workstations would have created additional imbalance.

The solution was to organize production lines according to cycle time rather than product type.

The result: 30% additional capacity using the existing footprint, with no additional square meters.

Other approaches can also help defense manufacturers absorb variability:

• Targeted make-or-buy strategies
• Semi-automation of non-value-added activities
• Modular production lines
• Optimized internal logistics
• Production systems designed for variable volumes

The goal is not to turn defense factories into automotive plants. It is to adapt proven industrial principles to defense-specific requirements.

Digital engineering can accelerate industrialization

Capacity is not only about throughput. It is also about time-to-production.

Every month lost during industrial design, deployment or commissioning delays production against already constrained order books.

Akkodis uses several digital approaches to reduce this risk.

• Smart Commissioning provides real-time visibility of project progress, actions, testing and ramp-up while creating reusable models for future programs.
• Building Information Modeling (BIM) enables industrial solutions to be simulated before construction or physical modification begins.
• Numerical flow simulation can stress-test industrial architectures, identify bottlenecks and assess recovery scenarios before implementation.

In an environment where rebuilding a factory takes years, digitally testing a factory before modifying it can be a strategic advantage.

Four digital levers for defense manufacturing

Digital technologies are increasingly helping defense manufacturers improve capacity and industrial performance.

1. Industrial simulation and digital twins

Tools such as Witness and FlexSim, together with digital twins, can simulate production architectures and capacity scenarios without disrupting physical operations.

2. Automated internal logistics

AGVs, AMRs and other robotic technologies can automate material movement and picking activities, reducing non-value-added time and improving internal flows.

3. AI and machine learning for equipment performance

Machine learning can analyze equipment data to identify relationships between machine time, tool changes, quality and downtime. This can help anticipate performance degradation and optimize production schedules.

4. AI embedded in defense systems

AI embedded in defense systems will increasingly require both algorithmic expertise and deep knowledge of qualification, validation, cybersecurity and systems engineering.

Product development is another bottleneck

Increasing manufacturing throughput is only part of the challenge.

Defense systems are designed to operate for decades and must evolve through successive support and upgrade phases without compromising qualification, cybersecurity or performance.

Software, electronics, mechanical components: everything that makes up a defense product must withstand severe constraints and deliver first-rate performance over the long term,

says Frédéric Balduzzi, Delivery Director at Akkodis.

Introducing AI or new software capabilities into an existing defense system therefore involves much more than selecting an algorithm. Engineers must demonstrate behavior across relevant scenarios while maintaining:

• System and interface compatibility
• Cybersecurity
• Non-regression
• Test coverage
• Certification requirements

This is why software acceleration must be considered within the wider system architecture and lifecycle strategy.

Integrating industrialization from the start

Olivier Nadal, Delivery Director Aerospace & Defense at Akkodis, highlights another critical factor: industrialization needs to be considered from the earliest stages of product development.

In a rapid defense ramp-up, success depends not only on developing a high-performance product, but on creating a system that can be qualified, certified, industrialized and reproduced quickly.

This requires closer integration between engineering, manufacturing, testing and certification, supported by:

• Standardized architectures
• Automated testing and certification activities
• Continuous use of test data
• Earlier detection of performance drift
• Continuous improvement throughout the lifecycle

As AI, cyber technologies and systems-of-systems become more prevalent, certification approaches are also evolving. The industry must increasingly balance risk control, certification confidence and speed of entry into service.

Building a more resilientdefenseindustrial base

Defense manufacturers cannot solve today's capacity challenge by optimizing only one part of the value chain. Manufacturing, electronics and software operate on different timelines and face different constraints. Improving one area can simply move the bottleneck elsewhere.

The answer is an end-to-end industrial approach connecting product engineering, software, electronics, manufacturing, logistics, testing and certification.

The immediate opportunity is to unlock more capacity from existing facilities while Defense accelerating industrialization and product development.

For defense manufacturers under pressure to deliver more, faster, the question is therefore not only:

“Where can we build the next factory?”

It is also:

“How much more can we produce with the industrial capacity we already have?”

Akkodis combines manufacturing, engineering, software and digital expertise to help aerospace and defense organizations optimize industrial performance and accelerate the development, industrialization and lifecycle management of critical systems.