Creating a Process Digital Twin to Unlock Operational Excellence and Build the Foundations for Agentic AI in Processes at Leonardo 

Meet our customer

Leonardo is one of the world’s leading aerospace, defence, and security companies, with over 62,000 employees and a global presence spanning multiple countries. Operating across five divisions, – each with their own internal quality systems, certifications, and compliance requirements – Leonardo manages one of the most operationally complex process landscapes in the defence industry. 

The challenge: complexity at scale 

Leonardo’s strength is also its operational challenge. With multiple divisions each running their own quality management systems, processes and tools, and, the organization had to face a fundamental problem: there was no common language, no shared methodology, and no single source of truth for how work was actually performed. 

“One of our main elements of attention is our organizational complexity,” explains Massimo Scalvenzi, Head of Quality Solutions Department. “It was really important to give all our divisions a common set of methodologies and approaches.” 

Beyond alignment, Leonardo also faced the challenge of adoption. Driving engagement with process management among people who are not process specialists requires a clear value proposition and tools that are accessible and boast a simple user experience. 

Building the Process Digital Twin: a single source of truth 

Leonardo deployed ARIS as the foundation for a governed Digital Twin of its processes and organization – a living, continuously updated model of how work is designed and executed in the divisions. 

Today, Leonardo has more than 5,000 process models designed in ARIS – spanning both process maps and supporting databases – making it one of the most extensive process intelligence deployments in the European defense sector. Across the organization, more than 300 users actively work within the ARIS platform and through the ARIS Portal, all 62,000+ employees have been given access to the full process landscape, ensuring the Process Digital Twin is not a back-office tool but an enterprise-wide operational resource. 

To make adoption work at this scale, Leonardo established a centre of competence in its Digital Solutions Department dedicated to process excellence. In addition, a cross-divisional working group was also created – bringing together ARIS users from every division to share experiences and learn from each other. “We need to give people the instruments to fulfil their objectives,” says Scalvenzi. “You have to earn their interest by showing them why it is important.”  

Closing the gap with Process Mining 

Having built a comprehensive model of how its processes should work, Leonardo is now using ARIS Process Mining to understand how they actually work – and the gap between the two. 

“The procedures are the theory,” explains Scalvenzi. “Once applied, it’s not always applied accordingly so we’re addressing that with ARIS’ Process Mining capabilities.” 

Leonardo’s process mining campaign began with its engineering and product development processes – some of the most complex and business-critical in the organization. The objectives are clear and measurable: close the bridge between theoretical and real-life processes, identify and measure lead times across sub-processes, detect uncontrolled deviations and bottlenecks, and use those insights to drive targeted process improvement. 

The value extends beyond operational efficiency. When Leonardo evaluates new tools – such as a new PLM system or requirements management platform – having processes modelled and agreed among stakeholders gives the business clearer, more reliable functional requirements. “Rather than only defining requirements to implement a new tool, having the process modelled and agreed among stakeholders gives clearer information to deliver the new service,” says Scalvenzi. 

The road ahead: AI-ready operations 

Leonardo is now starting to leverage on ARIS’s AI capabilities to accelerate the translation of its extensive internal procedural documentation directly into structured BPMN models. “We cannot spend weeks and months to bring all the procedures into models,” says Scalvenzi. “We think AI capabilities will be the key trigger for us.” 

But the longer-term ambition goes further. As AI agents become a strategic priority across the enterprise, Leonardo sees its ARIS-powered Process Digital Twin as the essential foundation – giving agents the process context, rules, and boundaries they need to operate in an autonomous but reliable and trustworthy manner, creating new business value. 

“The aim is to influence how we want to use AI – to make our processes work better,” says Scalvenzi. “If we can influence the agents’ design by giving them the necessary process context and intelligence, that is a very important objective. And so, we are working towards this direction, providing the foundation on which the business can start to deploy them effectively.”