Supply chain resilience is a core focus in the AMRC’s strategic vision. Victor Shi, supply chain resilience theme lead at the University of Sheffield AMRC, explores what it means, why it’s important for the AMRC and what is to come.  

Article featured in the latest issue of the AMRC Journal.

What is supply chain resilience? It consists of a combination of flows, relationships, adaptability and the capacity to transform in the face of change. 

Flow: Materials flow from suppliers to customers in the form of raw materials for finished goods and reverse material flows, from customers to the manufacturer, driving sustainability and resource efficiency. Additionally, there is information and financial flows between customers and suppliers, which are intertwined within the complex network of businesses.

Relationships: Visualise this through a graph, where nodes represent firms and edges show the relationships between them. In collaborative relationships, partners openly share knowledge and technical roadmaps to improve the overall productivity of the entire supply chain. In adversarial relationships, supply chain companies compete, disrupt, and decouple to access market resources.

Adaptability: Supply chain resilience focuses on the breakdowns within the supply chain network - but it can also evolve, adapt and overcome such challenges, including major world-changing events such as Covid-19, shipment blockages at the Suez Canal and disruptions in the Red Sea.

The severity of these supply chain constraints can range from increased costs in developing new supply bases, delays in manufacturing processes, inventory build-ups and difficulties in downstream production ramp-ups. All these factors can lead to order backlogs and place stress on the supply base, impacting both quality and safety.

But, as the frequency of supply chain disruptions increases, can the supply base adapt and meet delivery targets? Anticipating, observing and acting against supply chain disruptions both upstream and downstream can help manufacturing firms become more agile. 

Supply chain resilience at the AMRC is one of our core focus areas and our approach looks at both preventing supply chain risks, such as from world conflicts and recovering from supply chain disruptions made through the continuous development of a supply chain community of practice. This helps enhance our skillsets, improve resource capabilities across the organisation and to work jointly with our partners to better understand leading tools and techniques.

The vision of the AMRC's supply chain research theme is to become a leader in the transformation of UK industries' resilient supply chains: by recognising the potential of manufacturing supply chain opportunities where UK businesses are well-positioned - alongside developing tools and techniques to provide unbiased and reliable supply chain support to the UK manufacturing industry.

The strategic objectives of the AMRC supply chain resiliency strategy are to help businesses untangle the complexities in supply chain networks by achieving the following goals: 

• Exploiting supply chain opportunities in rapidly growing sectors; 
• Developing measures and assessments for manufacturing supply chain resilience; 
• Creating holistic analysis tools to prioritise cross-sector supply chain opportunities; 
• Transforming into a digital supply chain to utilise technology for increased visibility and growth opportunities. 

Recent projects of note worked on by the AMRC, connected to the supply chain include:

Supply chain complexity 

Engaging with supply chains is an essential step in building trust. Marco Franchino, technical lead for cost modelling and technical fellow Dr Cansu Kandemir, both working in the Integrated Manufacturing Group at the AMRC, collaborated with University of Sheffield management school scholar, Dr Diego Ruiz Hernandez, to develop a methodology for measuring supply chain complexity in the manufacturing context. 

This methodology was then applied in the £10 million Zero Carbon Humber project, funded by the UK government. The Zero Carbon Humber project partnered with Avanade, Microsoft and Accenture, to develop a digital Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for industrial decarbonisation supply chains. 

AMRC research engineer Christopher Haynes, who investigated the Zero Carbon Humber supply base, suggests that increased complexity in critical materials and components could add value by providing alternative sources and flexibility to cover potential uncertainties in hydrogen production and carbon capture infrastructure. 

The project's output demonstrates the potential of digital models in solving complex supply chain problems. The product-level digital twin showcases the benefits of connectivity between hydrogen producers, industrial emitters and various cross-sector actors in industrial decarbonisation clusters. It also includes embedded financial modelling of different supply and demand scenarios, providing investors with visibility of potential order volume and related return on investment. The supply chain model visualises the level of specialty and value across more than 700 products/commodities and more than 300 potential manufacturing suppliers in the UK.

A systematic methodology

Identifying critical products and processes in UK manufacturing was developed by the AMRC, in partnership with fellow High Value Manufacturing Catapult research centres WMG (the University of Warwick), CPI, National Manufacturing Institute Scotland (NMIS) and the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC). 

The results of this project included a strong methodology and toolkit for evaluating products, processes and cross-sector capabilities in the UK manufacturing industry, providing a macro-level perspective that is crucial for informing governmental policies and private investment decisions. Additionally, an integrated supply chain assessment framework was created within the HVM Catapult to facilitate comprehensive assessments and inform strategic supply chain decision-making.

Supply chain demonstrator

Collectively across our South Yorkshire, Lancashire and North Wales facilities, a team from each site created its own supply chain demonstrator. 

The models at each centre, all created using different methods, help to observe the magnitude of financial, sustainability and operational key performance indicators (KPIs) in a virtual environment - which can help manufacturers gain confidence in their actions during supply chain disruptions. 

The team in South Yorkshire has developed a demonstrator wall to exhibit simulation and modelling capabilities, supporting businesses in making informed decisions. 

One model focuses on forecasting economic and operational performance based on users’ choices regarding the number and geographical distribution of global suppliers for a UK-based company, while factoring in potential disruption. A second model simulates a hypothetical UK semiconductor supply chain, optimising the location of key network points and exploring the viability of a UK-based supply chain. 

At AMRC Cymru, the team utilised an existing piece of technology by Industrial Vision Systems (IVS) in the form of a smart workstation, which set out to showcase a supply chain with a physical element of assembling components, showing three companies feeding into one another. 

The team showcased the logistics and tracking of the logistics system, assembly time and data collection in terms of in process inspection, goods receipt inspection and final inspection prior to despatch to the final end customer. All of which was carried out on the IVS work station and further development of gathering data was completed in the form of utilising the Siemens mindsphere digital connectivity application.

The supply chain digital thread demonstrator at AMRC North West explores and showcases the potential of digitally enabled, interconnected supply chains. By using the printed circuit board assembly process as a case study. The demonstrator highlighted the integration of various physical components in manufacturing and facilitated seamless data exchange across the supply chain. 

Through the use of advanced manufacturing execution systems, the project captured and embedded quality control data within the digital thread, enabling traceability down to the individual component level and the specific processes and personnel involved.

Ultimately, the demonstrators for the connected supply chain ecosystem enhanced resilience against single points of failure, managed logistics disruptions and provided the agility to respond to demand fluctuations. 

The supply chain demonstrators approach enabled a diverse range of digital and modelling capabilities benefiting supply chain visibility, quality and efficiency, while reducing costs, waste and carbon footprint, thereby paving the way for a more sustainable manufacturing future. 

Supply chain transformation playbook

With this project, the AMRC is focussing on capturing comprehensive information about supply chains across various industries to identify the challenges faced by manufacturing sectors in the UK. 

This initiative involves mapping these identified challenges to the demonstrators at AMRC to showcase viable solutions for enhancing supply chain efficiency and resilience. By addressing the needs of both large industries and SMEs, the project aims to provide tailored strategies that improve supply chain operations, support regional economic growth and foster innovation in manufacturing practices. 

Our future aims in this focus theme will look to explore the development of a digital test bed to enable supply chain mapping, develop and deploy technology to help increase connectivity, competitiveness, capacity and capability - to help support innovation driven enterprises to develop - as well as create supply chain programmes; Fit 4 Aerospace and Fit 4 Defence.

The UK manufacturing sector provides more than 2.5million jobs, stimulates economic growth, attracts inward investment and captures supply chain opportunities. These are key drivers in strengthening the resilience of the UK's manufacturing supply base. 

Post-Covid 19, we observed increased financial instability in lower tier manufacturing supply chains, even good companies are depleting reserves. With downstream sectors picking up demand, suppliers are struggling to access finances and resources to meet these sudden increases in demand. 

Helping UK manufacturing supply chains to win orders, meet demand and produce high quality product and services are pivotal roles of the AMRC’s supply chain resilience mission. We are listening to our partners' needs to develop innovations that drive their operational efficiencies and resources effectiveness to make the same product with less waste and without compromise on quality. 

We are demonstrating leading tools and techniques to help supply chains transform from manual to automation. We invest our resources and skills towards understanding the mutual dependencies in the supply chain, to help our industrial partners to visualise supply chain relationships, who are critical sole source suppliers and what the hidden and forgotten capabilities are. Therefore, we can minimise the impacts of disruptive supply chain events, remove uncertainties in supply chain data sharing and increase confidence for companies to invest in manufacturing supply chain capabilities in the UK.