In the previous part of this blog series, you learned about Supply Chain Quality Management – what it is, how it works and why it matters.

In this third and final part of the resilient supply chains blog series, you will learn about the importance of sustainability in supply chains, and what steps you can take to make your supply chains more sustainable…

On February 23, 2022, the European Commission presented its proposal for a new supply chain law. This law, now known as ‘The EU Supply Chain Act’ or ‘Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive’ (CS3D), is not yet in effect at the time of writing. However, once brought in, C3SD is intended to address the sustainability problems faced (and caused) by modern supply chains.

In the next few years, C3SD and similar legislation will force many companies to modify their supply chains. Companies must make preparations now.

The temperature is rising and the pressure is on

The pressure on corporations to master their environmental impacts is probably highest in consumer goods industries, where each consumer is also a citizen of a world that increasingly feels the effects of climate change. But this pressure to change is being felt in sectors everywhere, and it will continue to grow as companies are required to become more sustainable.

However, focusing on sustainability is unfeasible if we only look at a company’s direct emissions (ie. scope 1 and 2) as, on average, 80% of the global equivalent dioxide of carbon (‘eCO2’ or ‘CO2e’, a measure created by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is generated by inbound and outbound supply chains (scope 3).

To succeed, your business needs a more detailed perspective on its supply chains

Because of the complexities of calculating supply chain carbon, integrated sustainability criteria in selecting, developing, or removing suppliers from the portfolio are critical (scope 3 Category 1&2).

Implementing these criteria begins by asking procurement teams to:

• Monitor the current eCO2 of each supplier by commodity use, eg. oil
  
  
• Maximize eCO2 calculation from ‘mass/product-based’ models – ie. stoichiometric calculation; an approach that measures which elements enter and exit a system. This is in contrast to ‘spend-based’ models, which measure a company’s financial priorities, not its eCO2 output
  
  
• Identify supplier technology levers to optimize their emissions, using the ‘Three Horizons’ framework – a McKinsey growth strategy approach for planning in uncertain times
• Contact suppliers to obtain their commitments to sustainability (eg. their sustainability roadmaps) and establish tools to report on their progress

Further insight can be obtained through a global environmental social governance (ESG) evaluation – which provides a detailed evaluation of your organization’s performance against various sustainability metrics, in addition to environmental impact. Capgemini’s partnership with Ecovadis (a leading ESG ranking company) can streamline this process.

More sustainability levers to pull

Another lever is to optimize the logistical connections between suppliers and delivery centers (scope 3, categories 4 and 9). For example, real time localization of parcels (including  critical parameter tracking, eg. humidity or temperature, if needed) allows route optimization and the maximization of logistic volume (for example, how efficiently packed shipping containers are).

Through these steps, combined with our sustainable packaging offers that optimize weight and remove low recyclable materials (like moving from plastic to carton), we have helped our clients to save about a hundred thousand kilotons of eCO2 to date.

Conclusion: ‘going green’ is its own kind of resilience

These efforts (which are undoubtedly considerable) go beyond eco credentials. The reputational enhancement, improved regulatory compliance and potential cost efficiencies offered by increased sustainability will all contribute to the resilience of supply chains.

Indeed, the lion’s share of the carbon that companies are responsible for driving down is in their supply chains (scope 3), but, due to the complexity and scale of these supply chains, a sophisticated analysis and remediation strategy is required.

A company that calls itself sustainable without integrating its inbound and outboard supply chains is either misinformed or dishonest. And, either way, the consequences for failing to do this work will only get worse as time goes on…

This concludes our three part series on resilient supply chains.

A variety of stakeholders, international organizations and industry bodies will continue to require increasing sustainability commitments from companies. Anticipating the required changes is not just risk mitigation, but a competitive advantage – those who better understand can better adapt in a quickly changing regulatory (and planetary) environment. Need some help with your supply chain sustainability efforts? Choose a leading international partner with years of expertise across a range of industries. Find out how we can help you – contact our expert.

At the end of 2023, 58% of the world’s population used mobile internet, equating to 4.7 billion users – an increase of 2.1 billion since 2015, according to the GSMA’s The Mobile Economy 2024. Another set of research, conducted by Ericsson, estimates total mobile data traffic to grow by a factor of around three between 2023 and 2029.

As is increasingly obvious, today’s consumers and enterprises expect greater variety and levels of service, facilitated by ultra-fast data speeds and high network uptime. The telecoms industry must deliver.

To deploy network services capable of meeting these needs, the long term business plans of mobile network operators (MNOs) compel them to transform their mobile networks through new infrastructure and technology.

But what is network transformation?

For the purposes of this article, we define mobile network transformation as the partial or complete change of a network’s core elements (the bits that manage the mobile network operation, such as user authentication, session management, data routing, and billing) or access elements (the bits that connect mobile devices to the core network via radio waves).

Transformation naturally involves implementing digital technologies into these parts of the network, which allow adaptive and automated control of physical mobile network infrastructure, and generate data driven insights that support that automation. Examples – which we will discuss – include cloud native containerized network functions (CNFs), virtual replacements to traditional physical network functions (PNFs) that offer greater scalability and adaptability. 

In search of this future, MNOs aim to ‘clean up’ existing networks, through a slow decommissioning and replacement of the existing legacy network. Here, operators switch out physical-only infrastructure with new ‘digital meets physical’ software-defined network technologies, and then migrate customers and services over to these new, improved mobile networks. 

However, such transformations are extremely complex, and face many challenges – not all of which are known. Worst case scenarios involve expensive transformations that fail, forcing MNOs to fall back to their legacy networks.

For the successful transformation of the core network, an accurate project planning and a mitigation strategy for all known risks is essential. These risks are the result of doing something that few, if any, have done before; such transformations are at the cutting edge of mobile network technology.

Thinking strategically

The goal is an improved network that operates without service outages or negative customer impacts. To this end, it is very important that the network solution and services be tested rigorously before we begin migrating customers. This must cover all types of testing – but most importantly load, performance and soak.

If the MNO’s business use case is not defined, there is the risk of high investment but low ROI. To prevent this, MNOs must build solid business use cases before attempting to transform their networks, so that the new network can properly deliver its promised user experience and revenue.

Project management is also a critical part of a mobile core network (MCN) transformation, and entails the completion and delivery of each phase/milestone on time and within budget. MCN transformation activity has many moving parts, so a lack of expertise in planning or delivery can impact heavily on milestone delivery, including delays to go live – along with potential financial and reputational consequences.

Network transformations can cost millions, including investments in new staff, training and vendor solutions. So, the key challenge is to properly plan and streamline project delivery.       

Challenges and risks

The known challenges or risks can largely be resolved by strategic planning, but unknown challenges or risks are very difficult to predict or measure. And these unknown challenges and risks can be critical blockers in the transformation journey.

Migrating customers from the legacy network to the new one is the ultimate goal of the transformation journey, and the migration strategy is crucial to ensure the smooth handover of customers. This is an area where MNOs must pay particular attention. They should be careful while selecting solution providers, solution integrators and technical resources for the MCN transformation journey. Indeed, the success of MCN projects depends on the correct selection of solutions from the vendor and the efforts of the MNO’s technical team to implement and integrate these solutions.

However, selecting the CNF/VNF and cloud infrastructure solution provider is just the beginning. MNOs also face various risks and challenges in their network transformations. These include the following:

Design

• Risks: if the network’s high level design (HLD) or low level design (LLD) is inaccurate or unsuited to network needs, lab and production deployment can fail.
• Challenges: network service and network design misalignment in HLD or LLDs, design gaps (eg. gaps found during test and validation, or business requirements not being covered by the network), or a lack of suitable engineering, design and test resources.

Solution integration

• Risks: if all the network’s parts, including devices, RANs, fixed networks and mobile core network components are not carefully planned in the integration strategy, new and legacy network interfaces may not properly integrate – causing network issues.
• Challenges: if risks aren’t identified early in the integration strategy, then the solution may require redeployment. This can cause delays in the integration timeline. And if the deployment, redeployment or upgrades of the core network nodes aren’t planned accurately, we can expect further delays to test and validation timeframes in the lab, or during production.

Core network function/virtual network function (CNF/VNF) and cloud infrastructure

• Risks: network stability and performance are at risk if network functions (NFs) aren’t fully certified and if services are not deployed and tested against the MNO’s desired network features.
• Challenges: The main challenge is to ensure the network is stable and efficient for migrated customers, fulfilling all business use cases and the migration user journey. In short, the major challenge is to ensure the stability and optimized performance of cloud, microservices, pods and networking, to sustain the network’s traffic load.

Technical resource

• Risks: if network design, test, integration and operation resources are inefficient or unable to understand design requirements, vendor solutions and integration points for various interfaces and features, there is the risk of the transformed network facing issues that were not identified and remediated in the design, integration and test phases.
• Challenges: The MNO’s technical team must align itself with the company’s transformation requirements, especially if a new hardware and/or software vendor is introduced. If the MNO’s design, test and ops teams fail to acquire the expertise required to operate the solution independently, the MNO may struggle to properly utilize its newly transformed network.

Test and validation

• Risks: if the MNO’s network services test and validation approach is not suited to the transformed network solution, there is a risk of testing being performed superficially, below the level of detail required to actually gather useful information.
• Challenges: the effort put into the test strategy, along with the test methodology itself, determine how likely we are to find (and fix) major defects in the new network.

Customer migration challenges and risks

This is the last step in the network transformation journey, where the major risk is the failure of the customer migration. The challenge, then, is how to complete the migration as per the business plan.

• Risks: a ‘big bang’ migration strategy (in which applications and data are migrated in one operation, at one point in time) can threaten the newly transformed network with frequent network outages and service failures. This can happen when new site capacity and performance are not proven to sustain the migrated customers’ traffic load. Ultimately, the critical risk is a negative customer experience caused by an unstable network or ineffective migration that could damage the MNO’s reputation.
• Challenges: it is difficult to roll back customers from the newly transformed network to your legacy network. It is also very difficult to identify the cause of failure in network solutions and services, if the migration strategy of rollout and rollback is not strategic; neglecting important factors like use cases, customer types, traffic steering plans and the number (and order) of customers to be onboarded.

Conclusion

Network transformation is, of course, a means to an end. For network operators, that end empowers them to deliver superior services, unlock new revenue streams, and optimize operational efficiency – all while attracting and retaining subscribers. This is achieved through significantly higher data speeds, lower latency, and by offering increased network capacity to customers.

On a global level, the effort of MNOs contributes to something far more significant. By building the infrastructure that will enable 5G, the Internet of Things, and the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, MNOs are helping to pave the way to a more interconnected, efficient and sustainable world of futuristic technologies; fully autonomous vehicles navigating complex urban environments, remote collaboration and telepresence technologies that transcend geographical boundaries, and a host of fantastic use cases as yet unimagined.

Considering or planning a core network transformation? Talk to our experts.

“Information is the resolution of uncertainty“

Claude Shannon, American mathematician, electrical engineer, computer scientist and cryptographer

Commercial aerospace in the ‘sea of chaos’

Today’s aerospace industry is under considerable pressure, which comes from several directions, and all at once. Climate change, rapid developments in digital technologies, the move to electric propulsion, the uptake in the acceptance of autonomous air vehicles and progress toward intelligent production methods – all add complexity to our business. But how do we optimize our businesses in this chaotic environment? How can we define a growth strategy with a clear path, amongst all this complexity? Where does one begin?

Traditional methods of technical management and systems engineering no longer appear able to keep our businesses afloat in this massive ‘sea of chaos’, made up of rapid macroeconomic changes and similarly disruptive trends. Timeframes are shortening. New digital methods and techniques are needed to cope. We must be able to better understand this complexity with sufficient insight – to avoid its dangers and seize its opportunities. And we need these answers soon, so we can chart a course through the chaos. Inaction or indecision aren’t viable; they leave us at the mercy of these chaotic outside forces. Instead, leadership is required. Being purely reactive is rarely good, but it’s dangerous in the current economic climate.

It won’t be easy, but there is a way through. That is the subject of this article.

Aviation operations, support, and innovation in the Digital Age

Since the 1970s, commercial aviation has trended towards larger aircraft that can support increased passenger numbers to and from major airport hubs. The author worked for Boeing in 2003. At that time, the commercial aerospace industry was at a crossroads. Should we build larger aircraft, like the Airbus 380 – or should we choose smaller, fuel efficient, lightweight aircraft – like the Boeing 787? The answer? Do both.

It turns out that the world could support both solutions for a while. The A380 allowed large quantities of passengers to fly in relative comfort for long haul flights to the other side of the world. However, the introduction of these huge aircraft forced airports to redesign their gates, operating and maintenance facilities to accommodate them. The 787 allowed economic travel for more regional and short haul flights, but this meant more aircraft in the air – with impacts on air traffic density, airport operations tempo and the need for new and larger airports to accommodate all these aircraft. 

As the above demonstrates, for every change in aircraft design, there are infrastructure, environmental and traffic density impacts to consider. In some cases, these impacts are discovered too late in the planning process, leaving us with subpar solutions and increased operating expenses. This problem often stems from a kind of discontinuity: aircraft production, maintenance and airport operations/management aren’t always designed together.

However, today this “do both” mentality has reached a limit with concerns over aviation’s impacts on the environment. The A380 has been discontinued. Technologies have been used to make aircraft lighter and more fuel efficient with an objective to transition to electric or biofuels to reduce carbon. “Doing both” is no longer sustainable. More discontinuities arise as a result.

Defeating discontinuity through the system groups

But what if we could address such discontinuity? Designing these processes together using our digital tools, through model-based methods – combining digital information sharing and visualization technology? As a result, we could merge these models and make better use of our technical skills to design and deliver well integrated ‘system groups’. These groups would be comprised of different aircraft types (plus their supporting airport and facilities infrastructure) so that, together, they deliver the desired business and environmental benefits.

With the right digital environments, we could design and optimize these system groups early and well before we physically build them.  This will allow us to anticipate and address problems before they become reality.  This might be called a ‘digital first’ approach, a concept in which we first digitally design, build and optimize the system, before building it physically. This has been very successful when building aircraft components and smaller systems.

The result? Once the new aircraft is put into operation, improvements can be continually made to facilities, air traffic management schemes, carbon emission schemes and, above all, our passengers’ aviation experience.

Since the data is flowing in a digitally continuous environment, it can be combined with business and project data to better measure, manage and realize business and societal benefits. The result is long term cost savings and improvements to society in general. 

But for changes necessitated by the sea of chaos, this approach might not be enough. For example, it may be difficult to make meaningful comparisons of the various ways to optimize the design of these system groups to achieve business and societal objectives without the help of advanced digital engineering tools, like simulation, digital twin technologies and AI decision support. Not only do we need more technology, but, above all, we need organized and efficient technical processes, decision making and leadership. Technology can only go so far.

A solution: digital engineering and system groups

The aerospace industry has responded to this challenge and is investing in improved technical and systems engineering methods. For example, one leading aerospace company describes how model based engineering could be used to improve systems engineering, provide a single source of engineering data, apply digital system models to represent physical ones and use digital twin models and a digital thread to better manage the entire system lifecycle. They basically combine the traditional systems engineering ‘V’ for designing physical systems with a virtual ‘upside down V’ for the development of virtual systems that complement the physical ones. It is considered a digital first approach.

Rolls Royce’s Digital ‘O’ also provides a digital first approach that combines traditional systems engineering concepts with digital models, simulation, and continuous design verification – as part of an overall digital first strategy to manage its products throughout their lifecycle. 

Other aerospace players have begun formalizing the use of digital engineering to better manage their products, technical effort and, most importantly, to accelerate their ability to perform systems engineering.

Of course, this isn’t a simple matter of deciding to ‘be more digital’ and licensing powerful CAD software or acquiring cloud space. Digital engineering has specific requirements and overheads. For example, there must be sufficient hardware and software solutions to provide a single source of data environment, the model-based tools to conduct design, simulation, and virtual integration, as well as the communications and culture to allow remote working – thereby bringing skills together from across the globe for improved value.

Digital engineering capability that can realize business and societal benefits must be managed and implemented such that people can provide their intelligence and insight to solve more complex problems. Once we have harnessed the power of digital engineering, we can use it to help us navigate through the “sea of chaos”.

Climate change is one of the largest societal problems we face. We need digital engineering to help us connect the discontinuities and we need effective leadership to manage the delivery of solutions.

Ready to chart your course?

This poses the obvious question; are your systems ready to deliver at this level? If not – we can help. What is needed is a way to manage your digital and systems engineering processes and transform your organization at the same time.

This is indeed a colossal challenge, however, if properly managed and supported by people who have ‘been there’, a solution tailored to the specific needs and circumstances of your organization can be achieved. People, processes, digital infrastructure, architecture, and transformation activities can be coordinated and managed – to produce the best result for the future you want.