Valuechain: reducing supply chain issues with digital intelligence

Who is Valuechain?

Valuechain is a company founded to combat supply chain issues and improve the QCD performance of suppliers. From helping OEMs and SMEs reduce the bullwhip effect of the supply chain, to network management and collaboration, our software helps create supply chain intelligence and feeds into the innovative technologies leading industry 4.0.

Our collaborative platform analyses real-time ERP data, providing supplier quality, cost and delivery performance insights to customers. The solution is made up of two products, Network Portal and Supplier Portal. While Portal is a data capture, analysis and communication platform for the entirety of the supply chain, Network Portal, on the other hand, simplifies network management and generates member intelligence.

History

Since being founded in 2013, Valuechain has evolved to become a supply chain and cluster management platform used by numerous OEMs, Tier-1s, SMEs and trade associations across high-value manufacturing industries.

Company growth has seen Valuechain embark on a global strategy, launching in China in 2013 and India in 2014. Other milestones include:

Co-founders Tom Dawes & Haifeng Guo launch Valuechain following PhD research in supply chain collaboration

Established offshore development team in Wuhan, China to develop prototype supply chain collaboration tools

Valuechain secures £300K NATEP (National Aerospace Technology Exploitation Programme) project which is a BIS AMSCI project managed by Aerospace Defence Securities (ADS) and Farnborough Aerospace Consortium

Valuechain secures €3.2m funding from European Commission to develop the minimum viable product of the networking portal to support cluster collaboration

Valuechain acquires Xactio supply chain portal from Canda Systems which had been supporting global aerospace, defence and nuclear tier 1s for >10 years. Valuechain redevelops the supplier portal using latest cloud technologies

Valuechain secures KTP with University of Huddersfield to establish supply chain data science capability

Valuechain launches its Supplier Portal at Gardner Aerospace Group in UK, Poland, France and India

Valuechain secures c.£490K funding from Innovate UK ACCESS project in collaboration with NEAA, WEAF and RFM to promote cross-sector collaboration across UK high value manufacturing industries

Valuechain secures supply chain data science project with The Growth Company to support the Made Smarter NW Pilot

Valuechain initiates collaboration with GTMA and Reshoring UK to enable multiple engineering and manufacturing clusters to connect and collaborate

Valuechain expands into North America, launching pilot with Canada Makes network

Our Story

You can learn more from failure than you can from success. That’s according to our chairman and founder, and ‘recovering manufacturer’, Tom Dawes.

Valuechain was born from a need to deeply understand the supply chain in order to avoid the effects of volatility. It all started with the first role of Valuechain founder, Tom Dawes. Fresh out of university with a degree in Manufacturing Engineering, he faced many supply chain inefficiencies at his first employer which was an aerospace subcontract machining SME. These were caused by poor planning and control systems, volatile demand forecasts and poor communication from the OEM to the tier 4 level that the company operated at. Sub-tier suppliers also faced similar problems and so, it was clear that the bullwhip effect was in full force in this particular supply chain.

Following experience within companies like this, Tom then founded his own, initially successful aerospace manufacturing company.

Ultimately, while the business was initially successful, it also experienced supply chain challenges. And, despite overcoming many issues, there was still one piece of the jigsaw missing. That was a robust e-procurement platform. Issues such as a low cost supply chain with controlled bottlenecks, fragmented systems and mismanaged risk played a part in the downfall of the company. However, our founder now knows that, even despite the 2007-8 financial crash, the company could have survived with better processes and software.

As a result of this experience, Valuechain was founded to overcome these issues. Creating an intelligent, connected supply chain with data collection, analysis and sharing means that no business has to deal with a disrupted supply chain again. Valuechain is the solution.