By David Rampton
On January 5, 2024, a Boeing's 737 MAX 9 aircraft door plug on an Alaska Airlines flight detached mid-air, leading to a large opening in the fuselage. FAA investigations identified systemic issues in Boeing's supply chain, highlighting gaps in quality control and supplier oversight. In complex, multi-tier Aerospace & Defense supply chains, the detection and mitigation of quality issues is extremely difficult to do. This incident is a clear example of why transparency is essential in ensuring resilience in high-stakes industries like aerospace and defense – underscoring the need for paradigm shift in how manufacturers think about transparency.
Transparency is essential when building resilient supply chains – especially in Aerospace & Defense. Resilience in this case, is the ability to identify, mitigate and overcome supply chain disruptions. Supply chain transparency not only enhances resilience, it creates a competitive advantage.
Supply Chain Terminology
Transparency in a supply chain determines how efficiently it can identify, prevent, or recover from a variety of disruptions. To better understand the relationship between transparency and resiliency, let’s establish some common terms and definitions as they relate to supply chain:
Supply Chain – Interconnected relationships between the people, processes, products, and places required to deliver a finished good. Rarely is a supply chain run as a linear, contained, end-to-end linkage of production activity. They are more like highly complex, multi-vectored networks of hardware manufacturing, logistical services and distribution nodes linked by a variety of processes, contracts or other business transactions.
Supply Chain Resiliency – The ability to withstand disruptions to the transactions between people, places, products and processes in a supply chain. These disruptions can be anything from extreme weather events, inflation, subject matter experts retiring without a suitable replacement, countries at war, a warehouse fire, discovery of fraudulent claims about raw materials, or a cybersecurity incident. Therefore, a supply chain is considered resilient when authorized persons can successfully process their products and intentionally move them through desired places with minimal disruption.
Supply Chain Visibility – Availability of data within a supply chain (e.g. the existence of a 3rd party test report by an authorized lab for mechanical testing of a metal alloy).
Supply Chain Traceability – Accessing data within the supply chain (e.g. linking a component’s 3rd party test report with the Certificate of Conformance for a final assembly).
Supply Chain Transparency – Accessibility of data within the supply chain (traceability activities, avoiding misinterpretation of contract requirements (e.g. sending Quality Engineers to the component supplier to review their end item data package, and then to the 3rd party test facility to check their equipment calibration maintenance programs – not very transparent)
Transparency means rapid access to trusted information about the people, places, products and processes in a supply chain - essential for withstanding disruptions and mitigating risks. Transparency in supply chains unlocks fast, intelligence-driven decision making - thwarting the efforts of corner-cutting suppliers and nation state actors. Transparency gives us the ability to place the right parts in the right place at the right time regardless of disruption.
Transparency with Technology
The Provenance Chain® Network focuses on leveraging best fit technologies to deliver transparency to our customers:
Blockchain ensures secure, immutable records of transactions - so that supply chain partners trust in a secure exchange of essential data without over-exposing proprietary information.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) analyzes supply chain data for insights and risk management - automating the manual and tedious capturing, assessing and standardizing of multi-modal data inputs.
Digital Twins or representations, not just of a single product or supplier, but of an entire interconnected supply chain network – providing the mission critical situational awareness for products long before we put them in the hands of the warfighter.
Transparency isn’t just a buzz word for ethical and sustainable business practices. It's an intelligence driven paradigm shift. It is essential for building resilient supply chains for resilient products. Transparency means a supply chain is responsive, and resistant to disruption. When it comes to the critical supply chains that support the Aerospace & Defense Industry, transparency isn’t just about cost and schedule reduction for better profit margins. Transparency is an asymmetric advantage for accelerating the delivery of mission critical products to the warfighter.
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