Case studies
Using bills of material and AI to improve supply chain visibility and risk management with Versed AI
Introduction
Versed AI was part of the Digital Supply Chain Hub’s first cohort, partnering with BAE Systems and receiving a £100,000 grant to develop technology for bill of materials-based mapping, a client-demanded feature that was initially set aside due to its complexity and development requirements before reaching commercial viability.
Who supplies my supplier?
Companies often lack oversight of their extended supply chains, leaving them exposed to hidden risks at Tier 2 and beyond. Versed AI addresses this by creating a vast knowledge graph of supply chain relationships.
Versed AI created an AI-based solution that combines automatically-generated bills of material with multi-tier supply chain visibility to give customers a hyper-relevant view of their supply chain upstream of Tier 1.
Lessons learned from real-world examples
Client feedback has driven significant improvements in Versed AI’s product offering, enhancing both the volume and relevance of its supply chain data. Relevance is highly situation specific; for example, a category manager focused on robot procurement will be interested in electronic components, while a compliance manager is concerned with suppliers across all categories.
Versed AI’s bill of materials-based mapping involves three inputs:
- Multi-tier supply chain mapping
- Identifying products companies in those supply chains produce or sell
- Generating a bill of materials for the product purchased by the client
The result is a detailed supply chain map showing which suppliers produce specific components at each level of the Bill of Materials and tier in the supply chain. In some cases, up to 95% of relationships can be excluded from the supply chain map, meaning that customers receive a smaller volume of highly relevant data, enabling them to reduce time on triage and move straight to action.
Successes and insights
Follow-on funding from the Digital Supply Chain Hub has enabled Versed AI to train new AI algorithms to acquire additional data and scale its processes and pipelines, leading to commercial revenue generation. To date, Versed AI has mapped over 300 supply chains as part of a commercial contract for a global automotive company and thousands more for customers across a range of industries.
Working with an automotive company provided valuable real-life insights and direct feedback about the data. These insights have allowed Versed AI to improve its algorithms and identify additional features to incorporate into their product roadmap.
Versed AI strategic acquisitions
Versed AI has been acquired by Exiger, a market-leading platform specialising in advanced supply chain mapping and intelligence. Exiger enhances this award-winning supply chain visibility by integrating state-of-the-art risk assessment, due diligence and workflow capabilities. In turn, Exiger benefits from Versed AI’s comprehensive multi-tier supply chain mapping and data aggregation to augment its existing supply chain risk management platform, enabling faster, more informed decision-making for customers in a complex global environment.
