The tool, co-developed by Rolls-Royce and researchers from the Management School at the University of Sheffield, enables high value manufacturing industries such as aerospace, automotive, and rail to benchmark their supply chain resilience, and manage and respond to risk and security issues. It’s hoped that it will also allow industry and government track and compare facility-level supply chain resilience.
At Rolls-Royce, the tool is already in use and has increased performance.
Developed as part of Project FPSCRS (Future Proof Supply Chain Resilience and Security), which was funded and supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Rolls-Royce, it establishes a resilience index scorecard system, hosted via a secure online platform, to provide a quantitative scale of resilience measurement and capture qualitative insights.
This can be used to benchmark organisations resilience over time to identify weak points, and compare scores by facility, region or business type. Created with input from industry leaders, the tool allows the government and advanced manufacturing industry to measure and reduce uncertainty and risk, minimise vulnerability and threat, and improve supply chain security and resilience.
Professor Lenny Koh, Director of AREC and Co-Head of Energy Institute at the University of Sheffield, and academic lead for the project, said: “SCRS framework underpins some of the thought leadership. We are very excited about what has been achieved already. We are now progressing to the next phase of this strategic work and partnership with Rolls-Royce.”
Peter Ralph, Head of Security and Resilience, Rolls-Royce, and the industry lead of FPSCRS, said: “This tool has provided a great contribution to our global business on business continuity, and risk and resilience management. Being able to measure organisational resilience is groundbreaking and it improves our preparedness and resilience through improved business continuity, organisational learning capacity, risk management and operational flexibility. ”
Paul O’Rourke, Group Security Director, Rolls-Royce, commented: “Leadership fully supports this work and tool on resilience, and has recognised the importance and impact it has created. Amongst the many improvements, this supports a shift in organisational culture and greater recognition of the strategic role of resilience measurement. We look forward to advancing our partnership and expanding the work on this to the next level including supply chain resilience.”