Blue Tech Sector Fellow
The Client: State Government Agency
Role: Provided senior leadership and extensive industry expertise to drive the adoption of advanced connectivity services across the submarine industrial base (SIB). The goal was to enhance supplier capacity, transparency, and resilience, ensuring the SIB could meet national security demands and foster high-paying, technology-driven jobs within Connecticut's Blue Tech Sector.
Situation: The Blue Tech Sector, encompassing the maritime and naval industries, is a critical component of the U.S. economy and national security. However, the submarine industrial base faces significant challenges, including limited supply chain transparency, inefficient outsourcing practices, and vulnerabilities that compromise resilience. The 2024 Department of Defense Appropriations Bill highlighted these issues, emphasizing the need for a more robust and responsive supply chain.
Industrial buyers struggled to assess the capabilities of Small and Medium-Sized Manufacturers (SMMs) due to inadequate visibility, making it difficult to offload work efficiently. SMMs, in turn, faced challenges in identifying reliable partners for outsourcing and relied heavily on manual status reporting processes, diverting resources from more critical tasks. To address these challenges and foster job creation in advanced manufacturing, the Connecticut agency enlisted HMC to help assess and develop a programmatic approach to strengthen the SIB and increase its supply chain resilience.
Approach: HMC, in collaboration with a team of partners—including AI experts in production planning, ideation leaders, pilot facilitators and the Naval & Maritime Consortium (NMC) —worked closely with early adopter SMMs to design and develop a prototype of the Supplier Capacity Platform. This prototype platform was created using a combination of no-code software, AI-driven technologies, and agile methodologies. Key objectives included:
Increasing visibility into supplier capacity and capabilities to allow industrial buyers to make informed sourcing decisions.
Automating status reporting to reduce reliance on inefficient manual processes, freeing up resources for higher-value tasks.
Enhancing the supply chain’s ability to adapt to disruptions by enabling SMMs to more efficiently collaborate and outsource work as needed.
The pilot phase was instrumental in validating the platform’s capabilities, allowing the project team to gather critical feedback from early adopters and refine the solution accordingly.
Results: HMC’s efforts in developing the Supplier Capacity Platform have positioned the Naval & Maritime Consortium (NMC) as a strong contender for first-time U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) funding. The prototype has demonstrated significant potential to enhance supply chain transparency, capacity, and resiliency within the submarine industrial base. While the DoD funding decision is still pending, early feedback from stakeholders has been positive, and the NMC is anticipating a favorable outcome.
The initiative has already laid a solid foundation for future expansion, and the potential DoD funding will enable further development and broad implementation of the platform. HMC’s strategic advisory role continues to support this effort as the NMC moves closer to securing critical funding and achieving its long-term objectives.
Strengthen Supply Chain Resilience with Strategic Blue Tech Solutions
At Hoagland Management & Consulting LLC (HMC), we bring advanced strategies and cutting-edge technologies to enhance supply chain capacity, transparency, and resilience in critical sectors like the submarine industrial base. Our collaborative approach drives innovation, fosters economic growth, and ensures readiness to meet national security demands—just as we did for this quasi-state government agency in the Blue Tech Sector.
If your organization is ready to tackle supply chain challenges and unlock advanced manufacturing opportunities, HMC is your trusted partner.
Contact us today to explore how we can help you lead innovation and secure funding for transformative solutions.