The Ukrainian sector of military tech and drone production today is showing exponential growth. However, at the stage of multiple scales – 2-10-100 times – most manufacturers rest on a rigid ‘development ceiling’. Traditional management methods – staffing, coordination in messengers and accounting in Excel tables – at some point stop working. The main barThe critical shortage of engineering personnel and chaos in the data are becoming eras.

How to remove defense companies from manual mode and ensure a technological breakthrough? Experts of the Ukrainian IT company IT-ENTERPRISE — SSO, Roman Yavorsky and head of DEFTECH projects, Taras Kakhniy – held a profile webinar Based on our own training platform UA Tech School, where we shared real cases of digital transformation of the defense industry with the help of ERP-systems and artificial intelligence. 

We have collected key insights and digital tools that already help the Ukrainian Miltech business to scale during the war.

Insight 1. Without ERP-Foundation, the company scales only its own chaos

When product specifications are made manually, and changes due to the constant dynamics of the situation are made daily, production begins to sink in marriage and downtime. For the Miltech sector, the modern ERP system is not just software, but the only ‘digital brain’ thatCombines sales, procurement, warehouses, finance and personnel management.

When the system in real time sees all resources (people, materials, machines), the company receives:

• 50% acceleration of TTM (TTM): ERP integration with CAD-systems (SolidWorks, Creo, etc) excludes doubles and automates the preparation of technical documentation.

Case: Leading Ukrainian manufacturer of control and management systems “Impulse” Thanks to the digital platform, it was able to completely restart production after relocation in less than a month.

• Increasing bandwidth by 30% on available capacities: Multilevel planning systems (MES, IPS) optimize equipment loading mathematically.

Case: Kharkiv Aerospace Engineering Plant Fed Thanks to APS-planning, it reduced the production cycle from 2 days to 10 minutes, providing 95% of the timeliness of orders.

• Reduction of warehouse stocks to 50%: Due to the automatic synchronization of WMS-systems with real production plans. 

Insight 2. AI agents instead of staffing: how to compensate for staff shortages

There is a catastrophic shortage of qualified designers, technologists and engineers throughout the market of the defense industry. If the team cannot be scaled physically, it is necessary to radically increase its efficiency through the automation of the routine.

Today IT-ENTERPRISE deploys a “digital command” at the enterprises Over 45 specialized AI agents, which close up to 85% of manual operations:

• Docai (working with documents): Recognizes, verifies and deposits contracts, invoices and invoices to ERP with an accuracy of more than 99.5%.

Case: The country’s largest military fundCome back aliveWith the help of Docai, it automatically processes about 70,000 documents a month and replaces up to 90% of human labor.

• AI for technical documentation: Automatically extracts data from drawings, standardizes them and independently forms technological processes on the basis of 3D models. This frees engineers from paper routine for real product development, accelerates coordination by 50% and reduces processing time by 90%.
• Smarteam and AI Anna Maly: Artificial intelligence analyzes the operation of machines through mobile applications and QR-codes, detecting anomalies in advance before the breakdown. The result is a reduction of downtime and repair costs by 30%.

Insight 3. Transparency as the main factor of capitalization and investor trust

Miltech in Ukraine is already becoming a mature business. Large international funds, foreign partners and government customers assess not only the coolness of the technology or drone, but also the financial stability of the manufacturer.

Transparent information system, automatic financial and management accounting according to international standards (IFRS) in real time – the only way to protect their costs to the customer and prove to investors the efficiency of funds.

Case: A reliable ERP platform is also the basis for Ukrainian business to enter global markets. A striking example is the company Ferrexpo, who built transparent accounting on the base IT-ENTERPRISE, successfully passed the audit of the ‘big four’ and appeared on the IPO on the London Stock Exchange.

Where to start transformation: the main rule of the defense industry

Experts IT-ENTERPRISE Emphasize the strict algorithm of innovation implementation. world-famous law Gigo (Garbage In, Garbage Out) Claims: if the input of the system is of poor quality data – the output will automatically be the same poor quality result.

‘Digital transformation is one of the basic conditions for scaling and winning the Miltech market right now. However, it cannot be started with artificial intelligence. First – the basic ERP and bringing the accounting and data, then – the optimization and standardization of processes, and only then – accelerating business with the help of AI. For rapidly growing Miltech companies, the Agile approach is ideal, which allows you to launch a basic MVP solution in a matter of weeks, while for large defensive giants unfolding a classic large-scale project. – experts note IT-ENTERPRISE.

Today, the IT-Enterprise ecosystem combines almost 40 years of automation experience, a team of more than 500 specialists and the highest international data security certificates (ISO 27001, GDPR, SOC2). IT-ENTERPRISE digital tools are used daily by about 1.2 million specialists, and the company has already implemented more than 1,400 projects for Ukrainian business and the public sector and has more than 50 cases of digital transformation in the field of defense.