State of the art analytics and managers in the defense industry

The study evaluated the utilization of analytics within the United States aerospace and defense industry. The data captured from managers as the independent variables were the demographics of the responding managers; age, years in the defense industry, years as a manager, education level, the type of managers, and size of the company. The dependent variables were the responses on the survey that established the position in the analytical framework provided of no utilization, hindsight, insight, and foresight. The study provided evidence that managers in the aerospace and defense industry had no significant difference in the adoption of analytics across the independent variables with the one exception of a significant difference in adoption of analytics for years as a manager. The survey results for age demographics comparison showed that the majority of managers in the aerospace and defense industry were predominately from the age groups over 41 years of age with 96% of the managers fitting into those ages. The comparison of the data with managers in the utilization of analytics demonstrated that only managers in the age groups of 41 to 50 and 51 to 60 demonstrated a no analytics level utilization. Implications of the study were the aerospace and defense industry operates on the same level of analytics as the literature found in studies across multiple industries. A conclusion was management, across all industries needs to improve their understanding of how to implement analytical analysis. Analytical theory is at the forefront of knowledge management concepts for state-of-the-art decision-making, using data from the large amounts of data available to business.