Supply Chain Dependency Mapping and Permissioning
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing supply chain management systems face challenges in efficiently managing multi-tier supply chains, particularly in responding to link failures, where it can take weeks or months to ramp up a new supplier, and there is limited visibility into quality statistics and order quantities between tiers, leading to potential losses and manual introductions between suppliers.
Innovation Solution
A platform with a dependency framework and part sharing/provisioning framework that uses a graph database and microservice architecture to map and track relationships, provide visualization, generate alerts, and allow permissioning for supply chain management, enabling automated dependency resolution and failover procedures, as well as direct access to validated sources for manufacturing solutions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a new supplier is ramped up to replace a failed supplier, then supply chain continuity is restored, but it takes weeks or months and requires significant expense for tooling and testing
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by pre-establishing backup suppliers and pre-validating their capabilities before failures occur. When a supplier failure is detected, the system can immediately activate pre-vetted backup suppliers, eliminating the weeks or months traditionally required for supplier ramp-up, tooling, and testing.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates copies of supplier relationships by maintaining multiple validated backup suppliers for each critical component. These backup suppliers are pre-integrated into the supply chain network with identical or equivalent capabilities, allowing immediate substitution without re-validation or re-tooling.
2Reliability
If manual introductions are made between suppliers at different tiers, then manufacturer control over the supply chain increases, but visibility into quality statistics and order quantities between tiers is lost
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements comprehensive feedback mechanisms that automatically collect and transmit quality statistics, order quantities, and performance data from all supply chain tiers back to the manufacturer. This maintains full visibility and control without requiring manual introductions, as the digital platform continuously monitors and reports on all transactions and quality metrics across the entire supply chain network.
Data Source
AI summary
A method for permissioning part manufacturing is provided, the method including associating a first user with a first part manufacturing template, the part manufacturing template defining a first vendor for providing a first part associated with the first part manufacturing template. The method then receives an indication from the first user to assign permissions associated with the first part manufacturing template to a second user. The method then provides the second user with limited access to the first part manufacturing template, such that the second user can order instances of the first part from the first vendor. The method then accepts an order for an instance of the first part placed by the second user and records analytics in a database accessible by the first user related to the order placed by the second user.