How Supply Chain Control Towers Are Reshaping A&D Operations

Introducing the Supply Chain Control Tower

In aerospace and defense, supply chain precision is critical. The complexity of managing global suppliers, stringent compliance requirements, and long production cycles makes disruptions especially costly. A Supply Chain Control Tower is essential for navigating these challenges, providing real-time visibility and intelligence across the entire supplier ecosystem. More than just inventory management or shipment tracking, a Control Tower strengthens resilience and agility in an industry where delays can halt aircraft production, disrupt defense programs, and drive-up costs. By leveraging real-time data, predictive analytics, and automation, it enables A&D companies to proactively mitigate risks, optimize production schedules, and maintain strict regulatory compliance.

A successful Supply Chain Control Tower is built on four core elements:

• End-to-End core foundation supply chain processes – A harmonized framework that monitors and optimizes the Plan, Source, Make, Deliver, and Return processes end-to-end.
• People – A dedicated team of supply chain experts empowered to make real-time decisions. The Control Tower helps break down organizational silos—a persistent challenge in the A&D industry—by enabling seamless collaboration across departments, suppliers, and stakeholders. With a unified view of operations, teams can work together more effectively, ensuring faster decision-making and improved supply chain resilience.
• Technology – A powerful information repository that integrates data analytics, decision-support functionalities, and intelligent automation to drive efficiency.
• Data – The backbone of the Control Tower, ensuring accurate, actionable insights to enhance supply chain performance.

Operational benefits of a Supply Chain Control Tower

Though not a one-size-fits-all solution, a Supply Chain Control Tower provides real-time visibility, predictive analytics, and enhanced collaboration—capabilities that are vital for driving resilience and efficiency in A&D supply chains.

Think of a Control Tower like the control center at an airport. It doesn’t just track flights; it monitors, predicts, and coordinates every step of the operation, ensuring everything runs smoothly and safely. Similarly, a Supply Chain Control Tower acts as the central hub for managing and optimizing supply chain operations, enabling companies to respond quickly to disruptions, anticipate risks, and streamline coordination across the ecosystem.

These benefits are driven by three core pillars:

1. End-to-end visibility for smarter decision-making
   • Visibility depicts an aerospace and defense company’s ability to sense, track, and monitor all its supply chain activities in real-time. A Control Tower integrates data from various sources like suppliers, logistics providers, manufacturing sites, and external risk intelligence to offer a comprehensive view of supply chain operations.
2. Ability to anticipate and manage disruption
   • In the A&D industry, waiting for supply chain disruptions to occur is not an option. Proactive risk management with the help of control towers helps anticipate potential risks before they occur using AI-driven forecasting and real-time analytics.
3. Stronger industry-wide collaboration for operational agility
   • Most of the A&D suppliers like to operate in silos due to security and compliance concerns. The presence of collaboration across the supply chain ecosystem is essential for production continuity and mission readiness.

The business case for Control Towers in A&D

Most A&D companies leverage control towers to achieve benefits like: 

• Revenue enhancement: Helps improve customer service levels with a 5–8% increase in On-Time In-Full (OTIF) and can drive an up to 250 basis point rise in overall performance.
• Cost optimization: Drives strategic cost reductions across key areas such as logistics, inventory, and manufacturing resource utilization, enabling an estimated 3–6% reduction in transportation expenses and a 5–15% decrease in inventory levels. By optimizing these levers, Control Towers help lower overall working capital requirements while enhancing supply chain efficiency and financial performance.
• Proactive risk management: Enables a 15–20% reduction in shortages ensures flexible and rapid responses to unexpected disruptions and minimizes compliance penalties through proactive issue detection.
• Sustainability and compliance: By embedding key environmental metrics into the Control Tower, companies can monitor carbon emissions, energy consumption, and sustainable sourcing in real time. This allows A&D firms to prioritize eco-conscious suppliers, track regulatory compliance, and optimize logistics to reduce their environmental footprint—ensuring that sustainability is not just a goal but an integral part of supply chain strategy.

AI-Driven control towers: Bringing values to the A&D industry

What if you could predict supply chain disruptions before they happen? Imagine knowing in advance when a supplier delay, material shortage, or geopolitical risk could impact production—and having the tools to act before it becomes a crisis. This is the power of Generative AI (GenAI) in Supply Chain Control Towers.

AI-driven Control Towers are transforming risk management and operational efficiency in A&D by providing end-to-end supply chain visibility and predictive insights. Companies can configure real-time risk alerts, instantly notifying them of threats hidden deep within their multi-tier supplier networks and critical commodities. With a 360-degree view of supplier data, businesses can assess the status and severity of each risk and take action before disruptions escalate.

Beyond alerts, AI enhances deep supply chain mapping, identifying cluster risks, critical nodes, supplier exposure, and commodity availability—all essential to maintaining production continuity. This proactive risk intelligence ensures companies can react first to potential threats, gaining a competitive edge.

Looking ahead, AI-driven Control Towers can be seamlessly integrated with third-party systems, ensuring continuous coordination between suppliers, manufacturers, and logistics providers. By leveraging AI, A&D companies can strengthen supply chain resilience, making them more agile and prepared for future challenges.

What is holding A&D companies back? Implementation Challenges

While Supply Chain Control Towers offer transformative benefits, many A&D companies struggle to fully implement them. Despite advancements in AI, automation, and data analytics, several barriers prevent organizations from realizing the full potential of these platforms.

• Data taxonomy: Many major OEMs and tier-one suppliers have started leveraging supply chain control towers but are facing challenges in adopting a holistic approach. One significant challenge is the quality of data available in the system. Harmonizing data definitions and models across the entire ecosystem is crucial as the data taxonomy and models defined by one client might not align with the other client. This lack of harmonization makes sharing information difficult.
• Organizational alignment: The structure of the organization must support the control tower. KPI dashboards need to be backed by key owners who are responsible for those performance metrics. If the organization is not aligned, it becomes challenging to adopt the control tower effectively.
• Technology: There once were significant technological challenges in configuring KPIs flexibly within systems to accurately derive KPI numbers. However, with the current advancements in technology, these issues have been resolved.

Final thoughts: Why A&D Companies Must Adopt Control Towers Now

A&D companies can no longer afford to take a reactive approach to supply chain disruptions. A single delayed component, regulatory hurdle, or geopolitical crisis can halt production, drive up costs, and put mission success at risk.

Now is the time to take control. Supply Chain Control Towers are more than just tracking tools—they are strategic command centers that provide real-time visibility, predictive insights, and proactive risk management. With the ability to anticipate and mitigate disruptions before they escalate, Control Towers ensure supply chains remain strong, agile, and mission ready.

Beyond improving daily operations, Control Towers help companies to future-proof critical supply chain functions against geopolitical instability, regulatory shifts, and unforeseen disruptions. A&D companies that embrace this technology will gain a competitive edge, while those that delay risk falling behind.

The time to build a digital, intelligent, and connected supply chain is now.

Capgemini’s solutions provide the expertise, processes, and technologies needed to implement and operate an effective control tower, delivering significant value to organizations across various industries. Meet with us at AeroIndia 2025 (Hall H, Booth, 1.7) to discuss the critical role a supply chain tower plays in the A&D supply chain ecosystem. Click here to learn more about our presence and follow Capgemini A&D on LinkedIn for updates from my colleagues.

Learn more:

Digital Continuity in Aerospace

Digital Twins in Aerospace and Defense

Intelligent Supply Chain for the Aerospace and Defense Industry

TechnoVision 2024: Aerospace and Defense