How Cofactr Crushes Supply Chain Resilience

Quick Recap: What the Heck Is Supply Chain Resilience?

Supply chain resilience is your ability to keep manufacturing moving when supply chain goes sideways—material shortages, delayed shipments, global chaos (looking at you, 2020).

Our first article on this subject, Supply Chain Resilience Simplified, covered identifying SCR risks,  and the second article, Supply Chain Resilience Risks: The 3 Fixes, covered fixing them. Two key concepts:

• Days of Supply (DOS): A fancy term for “how long you can keep building stuff before you run out of parts.” An easy, practical way to quantify SCR and quickly identify risk.
• The 3 Fixes: The simplest fixes are adding alternates, hoarding stock, and getting your suppliers to hoard stock (pipelined orders, inventory programs, etc.).

Now, we’re moving past theory and diving into how Cofactr turns all that into a ridiculously simple, streamlined process—one that’s easy enough to make SCR doable no matter how chaotic your world is.

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Step 1: Calculate Resilient Stock Level for each BOM

Before Cofactr can work its magic, you need to calculate how deep the stock pool (yours + distribution) needs to be for you to feel resilient. Let’s call this the Resilient Stock Level (RSL). This isn’t about stockpiling parts—it’s about understanding whether the supply pool is deep enough to keep your production line resilient to supply shocks.

Here’s the formula:

RSL = (Anticipated Annual Usage ÷ 250) × Your DOS Target

Here’s an Example:

Annual Usage: 1,000 units

DOS Target: 1,825 days (revisit the first article for more on setting this target).

RSL = (1,000 ÷ 250) × 1,825 = 7,300 units

Do this for each BOM. Aim high with the annual projection. Don’t get too hung up on the annual number. You can update it at any time or even have multiple scenarios. Once you have an RSL for each BOM you’re ready for the next step.

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Step 2: Let Cofactr Take the Wheel

Here’s where Cofactr shines: instead of making SCR feel like an insurmountable task, it automates the grind and gives you the insights you need. Just do this:

• Enter or upload your BOMs.
• Create a Project.
• Drop your BOMs into the Project, setting the Multiple to your RSL.

That’s it. You’re halfway to SCR peace. 

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One Time Set Up

Cofactr gives you tons of options, so the first time through, we need to customize the displayed columns in our Program to create an SCR view. It’s super simple; just open the column chooser and select the following columns:

• Procurement Subtotal
• Viable Qty
• Quotable Qty
• Ref Price
• Expected Inventory

Deselect any unnecessary columns to keep things focused.

The great thing is that this view is retained, so any time you open the Project, you’ll see the same view. You can also copy the Program, which will include the column selections, so you can easily create multiple what-if scenarios.

Here’s what it will look like:

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Step 3: Spot the Troublemakers

Now, let’s do this. Click on the Procurement column to sort by this column in descending order (arrow pointing down). This brings the high-risk items to the top. Cofactr uses a clever color-coded bar to summarize stock availability. Here’s what the colors and terms mean:

• Green (Buyable): Parts available from reliable suppliers where you have provided credentials to buy directly. 
• Blue (Quotable): Parts available from reliable suppliers, but you don’t have purchasing credentials set up yet. For SCR purposes, Green and Blue are the same.
• Yellow (Maybe): Parts listed by unauthorized suppliers, that means brokers. These numbers are useless for most purposes, especially useless for SCR. Just ignore them.
• Red (Need to Buy): Indicates a shortfall. After accounting for Buyable, Quotable, and (unreliable) Maybe stock, this is the unmet demand.

Now, just follow the yellow brick road. And red. Any part with yellow or red in the bar should be looked at. They are at the top. 

Here’s what to look for:

• In your head, compare the Subtotal column to the Buyable and Quotable stock columns combined. 
• If there is a big gap, check the box for that part; the background changes to light green.

In the screenshot above you’ll see I selected three for action. I thought about that SN74LVC573ARGYR but decided since there’s over two years of my usage in the market, I’m going to blow it off for now. 

So that’s it! SCR risks identified. Let’s try to fix them.

Inside Tip: If you prefer to save these three and work the solutions offline, you just click Export and Cofactr will download your selected parts as a spreadsheet.

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Step 4: Fix What’s Broken

Going part by part, check the ‘+’ symbol on the left to show part detail information (how awesome is that!). Let’s look at each part to see how Cofactr facilitates applying the three Fixes.

The AD7685ARMZRL7

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This part already has one approved alternate. Notice how Cofactr includes the original part and the alternates when calculating Buyable and Quotable; it is super useful for our purpose! 

With about a year of supply available between the part and its alternate, I’m not feeling super urgent. I would try to get my vendors to find additional alternates. If adding alternates doesn’t fix it, I would focus on setting up a pipeline order, which would then show up in the Expected Inventory column. 

The STM32F207IEH6

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This one troubles me the most because it has the biggest gap between Subtotal and Buyable + Quotable, so I’ll spend five minutes on it. None of the suggested alternates solve the problem, but a quick datasheet check revealed a better-than replacement, STM32F207IGH6, which has more flash memory and distributor stock of 60,000 units. I’ll ask engineering to approve it.

Let’s pretend engineering instantly approved it. I can put it in the search bar (red circle in the screenshot above), and now it’s in the alternates list. Then I click that green circle on the right, and now it’s an approved alternate, and its stock is automatically included in the Buyable and Quotable totals. Problem fixed!

The ECS-250-10-37B2-CKM-TR

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With no easy alternates listed I think the best fix is adding to my stock. This is why we have Cofactr’s Ref Price column in the view. It shows the extended cost for the entire 5-year pool. The cost for a one-year supply is $1,704.18, so assuming  I was confident in demand, I would just buy them. 

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And That’s All Folks 

Now you’re resilient.

These steps take about 15 minutes, and your resilience improves drastically—there are no spreadsheets, headaches, or wasted time. It is truly remarkable how efficient Cofactr is with this simplified approach to Supply Chain Resilience. 

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It’s So Simple, Is There More?

Yes there is! Supply chain resilience can get way more involved, and with lots of APIs and connectors to multiple data sources Cofactr provides much more sophisticated support. To explore what’s possible, a personalized demo is really the way to go, reach out to Cofactr sales. As a little teaser, here’s a cool feature:

Trend Analysis

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Classic SCR information, this type of data is very rare, kudos to Cofactr for providing it.

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Resilience With Ease

If you tried to do everything Cofactr just did in a few minutes, it would take you hours. And let’s be honest, you probably would never get around to it. 

Simplified supply chain resilience isn’t about being perfect—it’s about being good enough. When good enough is this easy, it’s hard to say no.

So go ahead, check SCR off your list, and get back to building cool stuff.

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