AEROSPACE giant Leonardo plans to get high-tech equipment into the hands of the armed forces faster thanks to a new approach introduced at Southampton.

Its factory on Millbrook Industrial Estate is one of four of the multi-national's electronics sites to initially adopt a new data-driven approach to design and manufacturing.

Leonardo says a “common data environment” will speed up development and cut costs as its scientists and engineers research and build advanced technology such as radars and protective countermeasures for aircraft.

By better exploiting the data it collects, Leonardo says it will get equipment to the UK armed forces and its allies faster.

Gareth Hetheridge, UK IT director for Leonardo, said: “For the first time ever, all of our scientists and engineers can look at the same data held in the same place at the same time.

“It immediately cuts away all those circuitous routes you normally have to go through to access information. We want to free up headspace and time for our people to do what’s really important: think, invent and solve problems.”

Leonardo says the common data environment – being introduced in Edinburgh, Luton and Basildon as well as Southampton – will go on to form a cornerstone of a digital transformation programme across its UK business.

It says the new approach will securely capture the massive quantities of data being generated across the organisation on a daily basis in one place.

Employees will then use a suite of tools, including a new “data science workbench”, to make the most of this data.

Benefits include being able to automate or simplify time-intensive processes and support better decision-making, it says. In early trials of the new approach, an analysis task that previously took four hours could be performed in 30 seconds, Leonardo says.

Elsewhere, a radar test cycle was reduced from several days to a few hours.

A recent report by independent analysts Oxford Economics showed Leonardo UK employees to be 80 per cent more productive than the national average.

Mr Hetheridge said: “We started working on this project in January this year and we managed to get data into the hands of our first users by April. That’s an incredible feat when you think about the technology we put in place to connect everyone.

"Our users previously had to look in several different places for the data and now we’ve given them a whole new experience – it’s like the difference between trying to find something in the dark with candlelight and then someone turns on a light switch. Suddenly you see the whole picture.”