Our Experience
Supply Chain Resilience
Supply chains around the world were severely disrupted during the COVID-19 pandemic. The uncertainty surrounding the duration of those disruptions — and their impact on the availability of critical military capabilities — became a prime concern for the UK government. A UK Government Department responsible for the procurement and support of major defence equipment was tasked with identifying and mitigating fragilities across its extended supply chain, including lower-tier suppliers.
Following the pandemic, the department was tasked with building a permanent supply chain resilience capability that would help identify fragilities in its extended supply chain early, and implement mitigations before they translated into operational risk to critical military capabilities.
Our role was to provide subject matter expertise to define a supply chain fragility framework and build lead indicator metrics capable of identifying risks across the thousands of suppliers that form the department's extended supply chain.
The silent success of supply chains around the world hides the complexity and fragilities that are a consequence of how goods and services are produced within highly complex and decentralised networks of organisations — typically spread across many geographies worldwide. When shocks such as COVID-19, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, or other geopolitical events strike unexpectedly, supply chains suffer and fragile suppliers become exposed to consequences entirely outside their control.
The failure of a small supplier deep in an extended supply chain can mean that critical military capabilities cannot be deployed. An early understanding of supply chain fragility enables mitigations to be implemented well before unforeseen events take place — and the ability to successfully identify fragilities across thousands of suppliers allows effort to be focused where it truly matters.
Working closely with the client team, we developed a taxonomy of fragility lenses and fragility metrics using publicly available and commercial data to build lead indicators that could surface early signs of weakness across the supply chain. The methodology was developed, tested, and validated in close collaboration throughout.
Following the development and validation phase, we supported the mapping of supply chains for key defence capabilities and worked with the client's technology consultant to develop a system for the early detection of fragilities at scale — enabling the department to move from reactive crisis management to proactive supply chain risk governance.
The resulting framework gave the department a structured, evidence-based approach to supply chain risk — one capable of prioritising effort across a vast and complex supplier base, and designed to be embedded as a permanent operational capability rather than a one-off study.