Gigabit December 2018

AEROJET ROCKETDYNE
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have happened over recent years
across the globe,” says Avakian. “Right
now, it’s all about how we protect our
company assets and information, and
make sure it is maintained for competitive
advantages. Then we look at how
we enable those critical business
capabilities where we can focus in on
digitisation, retire high-risk legacy
systems and look towards creating
intelligence out of that information.”
This, he feels, is where we see an
industry-wide turn towards robotics,
artificial intelligence (AI) and machine
learning as well as robotic process
automation (RPA) which helps
companies like Aerojet Rocketdyne
develop new opportunities and new
markets that previously did not exist.
Avakian points to Uber as an example.
“Nobody dreamed up Uber ten years
ago but here it is today and it’s a
multi-billion-dollar company,” he says.
“That’s what AI and robotic machine
learning are providing us with: they’re
creating new markets for companies
that don’t even exist yet.”
The challenge, then, as Aerojet
“WE’RE AT A VERY PIVOTAL POINT WITHIN THE WORLD
RIGHT NOW WHERE THE ENVIRONMENT IS CHANGING
RAPIDLY. IT’S DIFFERENT FROM WHAT IT WAS IN YEARS
PAST AND INFORMATION APPEARS TO BE KING. SO,
IT’S HOW DO WE USE THAT INFORMATION TO OUR
ADVANTAGE AND CAPITALIZE ON IT GOING FORWARD?”
—
Alan Avakian,
Chief Technology Officer (CTO)
at Aerojet Rocketdyne
DECEMBER 2018