Platform Strategies In Distributed Manufacturing Supply Chains
Twelve months after founder and CEO Trevor Stansbury bought Supply Dynamics from Alabama based, $3B O’Neal Industries, Ohio-based Queen City Angels and Ohio TechAngel Funds, a Rev1 Ventures managed fund, provided the capital needed to accelerate the market entry and expansion phase of the company. Supply Dynamics provides technology solutions designed to address the challenges of managing sourcing, procurement and supply chain complexity in highly distributed manufacturing environments and has attracted the attention of some of the largest Fortune 100 companies in the United States, including manufacturers of aircraft, turbine engines, and nuclear power plants.
For Stansbury, this comes as validation of his decision to purchase a web-based solution that has been the beneficiary of over $13 M in investment in recent years. Now begins what he hopes will be the most exciting chapter yet – “to scale the most user-friendly multi-enterprise platform for reducing manufactured product cost, benchmarking raw materials prices and choreographing sub-tier supplier interactions.” According to Trevor, “Companies don’t compete with companies anymore, supply chains compete with supply chains,” and SDX is the most affordable and non-invasive way for large Original Equipment Manufacturers to reduce cost, promote collaboration across the extended enterprise, and compress cycle times – all without replacing or interfering with a customer’s existing IT systems.”
Supply Dynamics evolved out of the need for OEMs to regain visibility into their multi-tiered supply chains. As OEMs became global operations, they sourced production of parts and assemblies to outside suppliers and lost the ability to control and view the bills-of-material that went into them (material like metals, plastics, chemicals and standard catalog parts) down through multiple tiers of supply. According to the Fabricators & Manufacturers Association International, such materials can account 36% or more of total product cost. Supply Dynamics’ SaaS solution, SDX, connects the dots between an OEM and its downstream suppliers and enables stakeholders to view, analyze and manage ever changing raw material requirements. This enables collaboration and standardization that can reduce overall manufacturing costs by an average of 3-25%.
Queen City Angels spokesman Ted Capossela stated, “One of the things that convinced us to invest in Supply Dynamics was their advanced technology and customer centric approach to a pervasive market need when it comes to managing ‘Direct Materials.’ There are many supply chain solutions for addressing ‘indirect materials’ but far fewer for ‘direct materials,’ and Supply Dynamics has the most complete and non-invasive solution we have ever seen for tackling that.” Since the spin-off from O’Neal, Supply Dynamics has acquired new contracts with blue chip, Fortune 50 customers. To us, Supply Dynamics is one of the most interesting and exciting investment opportunities for QCA in the past five years.”
“Our fund was impressed with the wealth of industry experience amongst Trevor and his team and the robustness of the SDX platform,” said Parker MacDonell, Managing Director, Ohio TechAngel Funds. “The fact that Supply Dynamics has secured some impressive marquee customers at such an early stage is rare and speaks volumes about their solution and their future market potential.”
Ohio TechAngel Funds is a co-investor in the funding round. “Supply Dynamics is in a unique position for a company just taking its first funding round. In their first year, post spin-off, they have assembled a talented team ready to scale and will utilize the new funding to build out their sales and marketing departments to expand their reach.”
About Supply Dynamics:
Supply Dynamics provides best-in-class technology solutions designed to address the challenges of managing sourcing, procurement and supply chain complexity in highly distributed manufacturing environments. Their SDX software is a cloud-based, multi-enterprise supply chain analytics suite. Coupled with a proprietary (blueprint to bill-of-material) data conversion process called Part Attribute Characterization, Supply Dynamics offers manufacturing companies unmatched visibility into material and process demand through all tiers of the extended supply chain.
About Queen City Angels:
The Queen City Angels (QCA) is a group of more than 50 experienced accredited investors who provide funding, support and guidance to early-stage growth companies in the Cincinnati area and surrounding region. QCA members, which include former C-level executives and entrepreneurs, draw from their personal operating and management experience to evaluate opportunities and provide on-going mentoring to young businesses with exceptional growth potential. Since 2000, QCA members have directly invested approximately $55 million in more than 80 portfolio companies. The total capital invested in these companies, including QCA members’ capital, syndication partners’ capital, follow-on venture capital funds and venture debt of approximately $450,000,000. CB Insight recently ranked QCA second out of 370 national angel organizations. For additional information, visit http://www.qca.com
About Rev1 Ventures:
Rev1 is a venture fund that helps entrepreneurs build great companies. Combining investment capital with a unique blend of services through our startup studio, we propel innovation for startups and corporate innovation teams. Our seasoned, data-driven team helps lay the foundation for scalable growth with the skills to evolve a product, sell to customers, and build the right team. Named a top VC investor in the Great Lakes Region, Rev1 manages a continuum of financial support from corporate and community partners, as well as the Ohio Third Frontier. Rev1 was named the Most Active VC in Ohio in 2017 by CB Insights. For more information, visit rev1ventures.com.
Platform Strategies In Distributed Manufacturing Supply Chains