Defense Manufacturer Strengthens Network Resiliency with AI

Introduction

A leading European defense manufacturer faced mounting pressure to scale operations across its three business units: aerospace, defense, and digital security. Driven by a strong post-COVID recovery in commercial air traffic, increased military spend across Europe, and rapid adoption of cybersecurity, biometrics, and other modern digital security technologies, demand surged and drove double-digit growth in net new sales.

Challenges

However, the company struggled to meet the surge in the demand. The company operates a vast and complex global supply chain network — spanning over 5,000 suppliers — and was increasingly at risk due to disruptions such as geopolitical instability and natural disasters. Despite the complexity of its network, the company relied on manual, spreadsheet-based processes to assess the impact of disruptions and identify mitigation strategies — a time-consuming and error-prone process. The network’s complexity, combined with the lack of real-time visibility and the ability to perform timely impact analyses resulted in longer lead times, inventory imbalances, and higher costs.

Solution

To address these challenges, the company partnered with C3 AI to launch a digital transformation initiative focused on improving end-to-end supply chain visibility and resiliency, starting with the implementation of C3 AI Supply Network Risk (SNR), an AI-enabled control tower and resiliency application. Within 42 weeks, the joint C3 and customer team deployed C3 AI SNR, unified data from 33 disparate data sources, and configured two modes of resiliency planning to help the company assess the impact of immediate and emerging risks to develop short-term and long-term mitigation strategies.

Results

The defense manufacturer gained unprecedented visibility and resiliency modeling capabilities across its multi-tier supply chain. With C3 AI, the company can identify supply chain risks, simulate scenarios, automate impact assessments, and mitigate risks with AI-driven recommendations — shifting from reactive, manual processes to preventive, holistic supply chain management. With the success of the initial production deployment, the company is expanding its partnership with C3 AI and scaling AI-driven capabilities across its operations.

About the Company

• €20+ billion annual revenue
• Tier 5+ network with 5,000+ suppliers
• 60+ countries in operation
• 80,000+ employees

Project Highlights

• 33 data sources unified across three
  business units into a single digital twin
  for end-to-end supply chain visibility
• 3 years of historical data integrated —
  live data connections configured for daily
  updates
• 9-layer BOM simplified and visualized
  for analysis
• 3 interactive UI screens configured with
  20+ real-time alerting rules
• 5 recommendation categories configured
  to mitigate disruptions, including alternative
  SKUs, ports, and suppliers
• 10 user roles configured with dynamic
  access controls and collaborative scenario
  planning
• Machine learning model configured to
  evaluate and score mitigation strategies
  based on service and financial impact