In 2024, China supplied 35.6% of the EU’s imports of rare-earth metals and compounds. The same figure for the US was 66.6%. Korea, 50%. Japan, 38%. At a glance, Europe is the least China-exposed major auto-producing bloc in the West. 

The picture changes one step downstream in the supply chain. Seraph’s analysis of the CEPII BACI trade database puts EU imports at about $100 million in 2024, against $1.2 billion of permanent magnets, the form in which most rare-earth value arrives. China supplied 88% of those magnet imports, up from 86% in 2022, and the next-largest source was 3%. The material arrives embedded in finished products, and that is where the supply chain risk sits. 

Three numbers, one country 

China accounts for roughly 17% of world rare-earth compound export value, down from 25% in 2022. It holds roughly 90% of global refining capacity. And it supplies 88% of Europe’s magnet imports, a figure the European Parliament Research Service puts at 98% once the scope widens beyond the single HS code to include Chinese-origin magnets re-exported within the EU. 

The three figures describe the same country because the supply chain becomes more Chinese the further downstream it is measured. Several of the biggest compound exporters in the data, Japan, Malaysia, Estonia, and France, refine or re-export feedstock that is itself China-linked upstream. 

Europe has the ore. It walked away from the refining. 

Europe’s deposits are large but none are developed. Norway’s Fen Complex raised its resource estimate in March 2026 to 15.9 million tonnes of rare-earth oxides, more than total US reserves. Sweden’s Per Geijer holds over 1.3 million tonnes, and Norra Kärr, rich in the heavy rare earths magnets need most, received its mining permit only in June 2026. Greenland has two large deposits: Tanbreez and Kvanefjeld, the latter holding roughly 11 million tonnes and frozen since 2021, when Greenland banned mining ore with more than trace levels of uranium. Not one tonne of European ore is being extracted today, and until 2025 the continent had essentially one commercial separation site.  

Permitting the mine and hosting the refinery are what Europe finds difficult, and the examples above already show the first half: a decade of environmental objections at Norra Kärr, a uranium ban at Kvanefjeld. 

It hasn’t always been this way. Through the 1980s, Rhône-Poulenc’s La Rochelle plant was the world’s leading rare-earth separator, with roughly half the global market.  

Separation is messy work: mixed rare earths pass through hundreds of solvent-extraction stages, consuming acids and solvents in volume and leaving acidic wastewater. When French regulators refused to renew its radioactive-waste license around 1990, the company wound down ore processing and moved separation into Chinese joint ventures. China took the industry the West gave up. State support of $9 to 10 billion between 2010 and 2019, looser environmental rules, and price collapses like the one that bankrupted Molycorp in 2015 kept Western projects impossible to finance. By 2019, China held 85 to 90% of global refining capacity. Since 2023, it has banned exporting the separation technology itself. 

Rebuilding runs into the same headwinds. Swedish permitting takes 10 to 15 years by LKAB’s account. Industrial power costs more than twice US levels, per the IEA. The expertise sits in China.  

Above all, no European OEM has signed the long-term purchase agreements a separation plant needs to raise financing. Solvay’s La Rochelle expansion waits on customer commitments, and its binding deals so far are with US magnet makers. The one separation project under construction in Europe, Caremag at Lacq, is funded largely by France and Japan, with half its heavy rare-earth output committed to Japanese buyers.  

China’s controls follow the value chain 

China’s export controls track the value chain it dominates. Each escalation has moved one step further downstream, toward the layer where the concentration sits. 

First, the elements. On April 4, 2025, MOFCOM’s Announcement No. 18 imposed export licensing on seven medium and heavy rare earths and their derived magnets. The automotive impact was immediate: magnet shipments to Germany halved between March and April 2025, Ford idled its Chicago Explorer plant for a week in May, and CLEPA reported European supplier lines halting as stockpiles ran out. Approval rates for European license applications climbed from roughly 25% in early June 2025 to about 60% by July, per CLEPA, with reviews commonly running 60 to 120 days. 

On October 9, 2025, Beijing added five more elements, extended controls to processing equipment, and introduced a rule requiring a Chinese export license for any magnet made anywhere in the world containing 0.1% or more Chinese-origin rare-earth content by value.  Almost every magnet traces back to China at some point, so in practice the rule asserts licensing authority over most of the world’s magnet production. 

The rule is currently paused. Following the Trump-Xi meeting in Busan, China suspended the October measures on November 9, 2025, for one year, until November 10, 2026. Since then, conditions have eased selectively. In December 2025, China issued the first year-long general licenses to major magnet producers, and Volkswagen’s suppliers were among the early beneficiaries. Enforcement against the US has moved the other way: 17 tons of yttrium shipped to the US between April and December 2025, against 333 tons in the prior eight months; in May 2026, Chinese exports of controlled compounds to the US fell to zero; and on June 22, 2026, Beijing added MP Materials and USA Rare Earths to its own entity list. 

November 10 is the date to plan around. If the suspension lapses, the 0.1% rule reaches magnets already inside Western-made motors and subassemblies, regardless of where they were manufactured. 

The policy response is aimed one layer upstream 

The EU’s response is real and moving, but much of it is aimed upstream of the chokepoint. The Critical Raw Materials Act, in force since 2024, sets 2030 benchmarks for extraction (10%), processing (40%), and recycling (25%), plus a 65% cap on any strategic raw material from a single third country.  

The benchmarks cover all 17 strategic materials as a class, so progress on lithium or nickel can flatter the headline numbers while rare earths stand still. Rare earths are furthest from every one: extraction today is zero, processing a few percent, recycling below 1%. Of the 47 strategic projects designated in March 2025, five cover rare earths, and Caremag is the only one under construction. 

The operational measures arrived on December 3, 2025, when the Commission adopted the RESourceEU Action Plan: a European Critical Raw Materials Centre for joint purchasing and stockpiling, proposed export restrictions on magnet scrap (Europe currently ships out the feedstock its own recyclers would need), and mandatory recycled-content shares in magnets. The G7’s June 2026 Evian summit added stockpile coordination and an IEA-linked monitoring platform, but a US-drafted price-floor scheme found no European backing.  

Capacity is still arriving, unevenly. Neo Performance Materials opened Europe’s first commercial EV-magnet plant in Narva, Estonia in September 2025 and commissioned a small-scale heavy rare-earth separation line in April 2026. Solvay’s La Rochelle site has produced magnet-grade NdPr since April 2025, with an ambition of 30% of European demand by 2030. Analysts put the combined Western pipeline at 30 to 50% of OECD magnet demand by 2028. In the meantime European buyers pay heavily: the IEA noted in October 2025 that European prices for some rare-earth materials reached up to six times Chinese domestic levels. 

What this means for manufacturers 

The data, the history, and the policy record point the same way: the risk sits downstream of where most companies look for it, and the fix sits downstream of where most policy is aimed. At 88% import concentration the exposure is close to universal and rarely appears under its own name. Treat November 10, 2026 as a hard date for inventory positioning and license documentation. And consider long-term supply agreements with the new Western producers.  

One year into the tariffs, supply chains are reorganizing. They aren’t coming home. 

In our May 2026 survey, we asked automotive leaders where they stood on reshoring, on a scale running from evaluating to completed. Roughly 2% reported it complete. 38% weren’t considering it at all. The rest sat in evaluating, planning, or early implementation. Our analysis of automotive-sector financial disclosures shows talk of reshoring and nearshoring up 23x since 2019.  

Their verdict was that reorientation of supply chains is greater than reshoring. The automotive picture, in real terms, says the same thing more sharply. 

For the automotive sector, import penetration sat around 44% throughout 2024, and fell to 39.6% in Q4 2025. The share fell because imports collapsed under the tariffs and the market itself shrank, not because domestic production rose to fill the gap. In 2025, under the full weight of the tariffs, both imports and domestic production fell together: real output down 1.3% compared to 2024, real imports down 10%.  

After stripping out inflation, real domestic output of vehicles and parts is up 2.2% since 2019, and real output tracks real imports almost exactly: real output and imports are tightly correlated1, rising and falling in step. Most pertinently, domestic output in the automotive sector has not risen to fill the space left by falling imports, which is exactly what reshoring would look like in the data.  

The import mix tells the same story. Auto imports fell 13% in 2025, and they fell from every major source: Mexico down 6%, Canada down 8%, Japan down 11%, South Korea down 16%, Germany down 20%, China down 25%. Not one major nation grew its share in the US market.  

The one shift worth noting is a relative one. Even though imports fell across the board, North America’s share of auto imports rose from 41% to 44%. The rest of the world just fell faster, by about 18% in comparison to Mexico and Canada’s collective 7%. The tariffs hit distant suppliers hardest and the integrated North American base least. That is reorientation toward the lowest-tariff, most-connected suppliers inside a shrinking total, with no sign yet of production coming home. 

The May numbers confirm what our survey base signaled more than a year ago. Back in December 2024, when we asked how operational footprints would shift, the answer was not expansion. A plurality of respondents expected to shrink or consolidate, and in the US specifically, consolidation intent ran well ahead of growth. The drivers were underutilized factories from soft demand, and tariffs that made the current footprint undesirable and uncertain. Where leaders did see opportunity, they pointed away from the US industrial Midwest, with Mexico drawing the most optimism. 

Policy uncertainty makes delay the rational choice. Footprint decisions run on a multi-year horizon; and an announcement comes in the form of a press release. Reshoring means a qualified supplier base, a hired skilled-trades workforce, and access to utilities.  

Only 8% of the leaders we surveyed expect a clean USMCA extension. A target that keeps moving is a reason to wait rather than build, and our respondents have tied their capital-expenditure delays directly to that uncertainty, deferring program launches, new equipment, and new facilities through 2026. 

Waiting to build is not the same as doing nothing. The OEMs have reacted where they can. Most are pursuing local-for-local, reducing China dependency while accepting that full independence is not available. Jim Farley has declared the era of the auto industry as a global business over, with localization accelerating. The intent is there; the capability is the constraint. Under new policy regimes, nearshoring may well be a strategic imperative. But there is an execution bottleneck – and until it clears, the data will keep showing reorientation, not reshoring.  

Automotive leaders are signaling that they are getting serious about reshoring. A look at mentions of reshoring and nearshoring across earnings calls and corporate filings since 2020 tells a clear story. Between mid 2020 and early 2025, the topic was barely raised by executives. The second half of 2025 saw talk of reversing offshoring hit record heights. So far in 2026, frequencies have stayed near those elevated levels. The inflection wasn’t noise. It was spurred by “Liberation Day” and China’s new protectionist trade policies affecting rare earth mineral exports. 

The dollar commitments have followed. Over $1.5 trillion in private sector commitments have been announced since January 2025, spanning 131 companies and 32 states. Automotive sits at $64.6 billion pledged – the third largest sector behind semiconductors and pharmaceuticals. 

The intent is real, and the capital is increasingly behind it. The execution is not. US manufacturing construction spending has fallen for five consecutive months and is down 9.6% year over year, ~16% below the August 2024 peak. Consensus forecasts project another 3.9% decline in 2026. Mexico’s industrial sector contracted 1.1% across 2025 despite record FDI inflows, and Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index readings have stayed in contraction territory through Q1 2026. Tesla’s and BYD’s flagship Mexican gigafactory plans appear to have quietly stalled. Bloomberg separately tracks roughly $7 trillion in “pending” projects that companies have planned but not committed to. 

Manufacturing capex doesn’t move on quarterly news cycles, and policy uncertainty is the immediate trigger for executive’s caution. Tariffs have seen three record breaking changes in the last twelve months, and automotive leaders are rationally hesitant about breaking ground on a five year plant commitment under those volatile conditions. That part of the story is real. But it is incomplete. Policy uncertainty is the trigger. Operational unreadiness is the binding constraint. 

When the Reshoring Initiative asked 500 US manufacturers what would bring production home, the answer wasn’t tariffs. OEMs said they would reshore 30% of offshore products if a skilled workforce existed domestically. Skilled labor was the top constraint – and it isn’t the only operational gap defining the investment cycle. 

Qualifying a new supplier for a single critical part takes 18 to 36 months, and most OEMs announcing US plants haven’t yet identified the domestic supply base that will feed them. Existing plants being asked to absorb more volume usually have less spare capacity than leadership assumes, and without targeted efficiency improvement, the capacity gap does not close on its own.  

This is the real opportunity in the pause. Companies that use it to do the operational work –total cost management, building workforce capability – will be ready when policy steadies. Every quarter spent waiting raises the cost and compresses the timeline of the work that still must be done. 

Under new policy regimes, reshoring is a strategic imperative. But there is an execution bottleneck. Disciplined planning and controlled execution are what separate the announcements that become plants from the announcements that become headlines. 

Introduction: Reindustrialising for Security

European defence manufacturing stands at a critical inflection point. As outlined in Seraph’s report “European Defence Manufacturing Ramps Up: 10 Actions for Manufacturers“, Europe faces an urgent need to scale its industrial base to match geopolitical realities.

Europe is accelerating its rearmament efforts in response to a resurgent Russia, evolution in US strategy and broader geopolitical instability.  Defence manufacturers are being called upon to deliver at a pace and scale not seen since the Cold War. The EU has recently announced the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) instrument,  a large-scale defence investment programme worth €150 billion . SAFE is the first pillar of the European Commission’s ReArm Europe Plan/Readiness 2030 which proposes to leverage over €800 billion in defence spending.

With defence spending rising and the strategic landscape evolving, operational leaders must navigate a complex threat environment—one in which supply chains, particularly those involving China, present growing risks.

So, while the European defence industrial base ramps up production, it is doing so with a critical vulnerability: deep, and in some cases opaque, dependencies on Chinese supply chains. This article explores the specific risks these dependencies pose, the mechanisms through which they could be exploited, and what strategies operational leaders should consider to ensure resilience in the long run.

Why Defence Manufacturing Is Uniquely Vulnerable

The unique operational demands of military supply chains distinguish them from conventional commercial ones in three key respects:

1. Long Development Timelines: Advanced military systems often require 5–10 years from design to deployment. Dependencies embedded at the early stages become difficult to unwind later.
2. Limited Substitutability: Many critical raw materials (CRMs) used in defence have no near-term substitutes. Their performance characteristics in missiles, radar, and space systems are often unmatched.
3. Geopolitical Exposure: Adversaries can exploit these dependencies in times of conflict or coercion. As the Ukraine conflict illustrates, supply resilience is not optional—it is a prerequisite for sustained operations.

Supply Chain Dilemma: Ramping Up Under Constraint

Europe’s defence manufacturers are being asked to scale quickly. Ammunition stocks are depleted. Equipment must be replaced or modernised. Collective defence readiness across NATO and the EU has become a top political priority.  Yet Europe’s industrial base is fragmented, undersized, and has limited surge capacity due to decades of underinvestment.

In this race against time, manufacturers naturally look to global supply chains to fill capacity and sourcing gaps. And that poses a risk.

Examining the Supply Chain – The China Risk

This need for expedience has led to increased entanglement with, what the EU terms a ‘systemic rival’, China. From critical raw materials (CRMs) and rare earth elements (REEs) to electronic components and software modules, many inputs essential to modern defence platforms are produced—entirely or primarily—by Chinese firms or within Chinese-controlled markets.

The European Commission currently designates 34 raw materials as “critical” due to their economic importance and supply risk. For eight of these—including bismuth, magnesium, and manganese—EU imports from China exceed 65%, a threshold indicating dangerous concentration. In some cases, the dependency is even more severe: China refines 87% of the world’s rare earths and produces 83% of the permanent magnets used in electric motors, missile guidance systems, and advanced sensors.

Recent Chinese export controls on gallium and germanium—used in advanced electronics and military applications—underscore the political leverage Beijing can exert through its dominance in strategic materials. As relations between the EU and China continue to cool, the risk of sudden supply shocks looms large.

The defence sector’s vulnerability isn’t limited to raw materials. Chinese-sourced dual-use components such as microchips, batteries, and optical elements are embedded in supply chains for everything from drones and radar to communications systems. Even tier-one or tier-two European suppliers often unknowingly rely on components with Chinese origins.

In the defence context, China’s leverage manifests in three core risk vectors:

1. Access Disruption: Political or military crises could result in sudden cutoffs of critical raw materials or component supplies, delaying production or maintenance of critical systems. China has a track record of using economic coercion as a geopolitical tool. The 2010 embargo on rare earth exports to Japan demonstrated how even modest supply chain leverage could be weaponized. More recently, Beijing has used informal pressure and bureaucratic hurdles to limit exports of gallium and germanium, two metals crucial to semiconductor and military-grade electronics production.
2. Quality and Counterfeit Risks: Investigations have previously found counterfeit or substandard electronic components originating from China embedded in Western military platforms, raising serious questions about reliability and security
3. Cyber and IP Threats: Chinese-made components and software have been associated with risks of hidden vulnerabilities or ‘backdoors’, potentially compromising the integrity and confidentiality of defence systems. Modern military systems increasingly integrate artificial intelligence, satellite communications, and advanced sensors. Many of these technologies are built on components from commercial sectors where China dominates production. For example, the global semiconductor industry remains critically exposed, with China playing a pivotal role in the back-end processing and assembly stages. Moreover, in a worst-case scenario, Chinese suppliers—under direction from the state—could restrict software updates, deny access to system upgrades, or introduce delays that impact system availability.

Strategic Blind Spots

The allure of low-cost components and rapid procurement timelines has historically led many European defence programs to tolerate or overlook third-country exposure in their supply chains. However, as the European Defence Industrial Strategy (EDIS) and White Paper on Defence Readiness 2030 highlight, this approach is increasingly seen as a systemic vulnerability.

One pressing issue is the lack of visibility across multi-tiered supply chains. Many prime contractors rely on mid-tier suppliers who, in turn, source globally without full transparency. This makes it difficult to assess cumulative exposure to Chinese inputs, especially for complex platforms with thousands of components.

“The mid-stream part of a defence manufacturing  supply chain is a noted blind spot”.

Ambrose Conroy, Founder & CEO, Seraph.

The beginning and the end of defence supply chains are often clear. Upstream materials such as aluminium and steel for example.  Downstream, the processes for assembling complex equipment such as aircraft are clearly known and managed.  But the mid-stream elements often contain thousands of components from thousands of companies across various regions.  Several tiers of suppliers are involved adding high levels of complexity, increasing risk of bottle-necks and points of failure.

Risk Mitigation for Operational Leaders: 6 Actions

In order for manufacturers to play an active role in anticipating, absorbing and reacting to disruptions, there is an increased need for risk mitigation actions.

European defence manufacturers must shift from reactive supply chain management to strategic resilience planning. Seraph recommends the following priorities:

1. Map Tier-N Dependencies Move beyond Tier-1 suppliers. Understand where CRMs, semiconductors, and specialised electronics originate.

Implementation Framework:

• Conduct deep-tier supplier audits to trace components back to their ultimate source
• Map critical path dependencies that could be subject to Chinese control or influence
• Identify “choke points” where Chinese suppliers hold dominant market positions
• Establish regular monitoring systems to track changes in supplier ownership and control structures

2. Dual-Source Critical Components Where China is the dominant source, identify and qualify alternative suppliers—even if they are more expensive or require co-investment. Examples include processors, capacitors, and rare earth magnets.
3. Invest in Domestic and Allied Processing Support EU initiatives like the Critical Raw Materials Act, which aims to process at least 40% of strategic materials domestically by 2030. Defence firms should align sourcing strategies with EU industrial policy and participate in public-private partnerships and government or European Defence Fund-backed consortia.
4. Build Strategic Stockpiles Like fuel or ammunition, key inputs should be stockpiled. This is especially true for components with long lead times or volatile availability.
5. Redesign for Resilience Where feasible, redesign components to reduce reliance on scarce inputs. Embed design-for-resilience principles in new platforms and upgrade cycles.
6. Embed Supply Chain Risk in Board-Level Governance Make supply chain resilience a standing agenda item. Incorporate risk metrics, scenario analyses, and progress on diversification into quarterly reviews.

Conclusion: A New Strategic Posture

Europe’s rearmament plan comes at a crucial time. European sovereignty in defence manufacturing is an essential part of the plan but cannot be achieved without decisive action on supply chain vulnerabilities.

China-related risks must be treated with the same strategic urgency as cyber threats or force readiness. The choice is not whether to decouple entirely from China—that is neither realistic nor desirable. The choice is whether to identify and mitigate risks before they materialise.

Operational leaders in Europe’s defence sector hold a pivotal role in this transformation. With the right focus, tools, and political support, Europe can reindustrialise with resilience at its core—ensuring its defence base is ready not just for today’s challenges, but for those that lie ahead.

Next Steps: Is Your Target Ready?

At Seraph, we specialise in operational due diligence for defence manufacturers.

Contact us www.seraph.com/contact-us/ to schedule a rapid readiness review.

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Amidst a period of geopolitical turbulence and fundamental shifts in traditional alliances, European nations have made a clear and urgent call to increase defence capacity, capabilities, and spending.

The European Defence Manufacturing industry is arguably facing its greatest need to create a stronger industrial base and develop the necessary production capabilities in the EU.

This report presents an analysis of the urgent need for European defence manufacturers to rapidly increase production capabilities and capacity in response to significant geopolitical shifts. The lessons that we take from history is that the time to prepare is now, as the world is moves regardless of our readiness.

How Seraph Delivers Sustainable Value

Seraph’s four-phase methodology – Understand, Stabilize, Sustain, and Transition – has been instrumental in helping manufacturing clients scale up, while achieving supply chain excellence and operational resilience. With an average ROI of over 300% and a payback period of less than six months, Seraph delivers both rapid capacity increases and long-term improvements. 

Whether your organization is responding to increased demand, navigating a post-merger integration, or countering tariff-driven cost surges, Seraph’s manufacturing expertise ensures a tailored approach to solve your most complex inventory and supply chain challenges. 

Contact us today to schedule a discovery call, or see our case studies for more information.

The aerospace industry needs to accelerate. We’re not taking off quick enough. The industry has endured substantial pain and disruptions nobody really expected. From 2019 onward, the industry was hit hard, and COVID drove it deeper. But now it’s 2024. Stagnation can’t be the new normal. Airline travel hit record highs in November and has stayed strong. Customers are begging for planes. We’ve seen a lot of this same pain in the automotive industry, but it’s turning a corner, and it’s now time for aerospace to do the same.

Here are 6 key areas in need of change:

Inventory Is Building Up and Straining cash-strapped balance sheets. Every CFO knows it. Every analyst asks about it. That’s what happens when you go from 6-7 turns a year to 2-3. Yes, the market conditions are hard and the FAA investigations aren’t helping. It might feel like you’ve done everything possible… I hate to burst your bubble but on a few recent aerospace assessments, there wasn’t even a plan for every part. Many companies haven’t changed their buying habits or regularly adapted their planning parameters, leading to value building up in warehouses and draining bank accounts. This isn’t bad news, it means you have the chance to keep improving. Manufacturing is not a by-the-seat-of-your-pants type job; consistency is crucial. Planning and material flow is no exception.

The Discipline Dilemma: When fatigue sets in, discipline is the first casualty. As people burn out, discipline is lost. The exception can’t become the rule. Ad hoc solutions lead to ad hoc results. Without a daily operating cadence, there is no foundation for continuous improvement. This has been further eroded by the loss of the knowledge of what good looks like.

The Talent Exodus: The frontline managers create the value, but we’ve left them unequipped. The industry has faced a significant loss of talent and exodus of skilled people with valuable experience. Frontline leaders, critical to keeping operations running and meeting the increasing ramp-up, were forged in crisis but haven’t been adequately invested in or developed. They’ve gotten used to firefighting, not operating with consistency and following established systems.

HR’s Strategic Focus: HR needs to get back to developing talent instead of just controlling costs. This type of mindset rarely works in purchasing and certainly doesn’t work with human resources. HR teams must focus on bringing in the right talent and having systems in place to support operations, quality, and logistics teams. Ensure that people are trained and that skills are being developed and retained within the organization. Strong frontline leaders and a robust management system are critical, especially during ramp-ups. However your company is structured, executives and leaders should empower human resources to acquire and develop the talent needed for stable performance.

Leaders are Data-Rich, Knowledge-Poor: So many dashboards and charts, but not enough clear direction, and more importantly, actions tying back to closing gaps in performance. I know AI is the hot topic right now, and it has a place. But rolling out AI without a steady state won’t do you any good. Change management is challenging, and the often neglected majority of the work required to get value out of a new tool In my 35 years of manufacturing, I haven’t found any silver bullets (for no shortage of trying). Hoping AI will magically turn data into profits and solve problems is unrealistic. If you don’t believe me, go call one of your exec friends that rolled out a big AI program and ask them if it worked as expected. My guess is that they faced a lot of challenges.

Back to Basics: Let’s be brutally honest – we’ve lost sight of the fundamentals. One of the fastest ways to amp things up is low-tech, daily consistency. Start with the simplest tools, narrow the focus, increase the intensity, and start banking wins that get people excited to come in and win the day. Establish a daily management cadence that makes sense.

Conclusion: All is not lost. The aerospace industry has the potential to soar, but it requires a relentless focus on the fundamentals. By reinvesting in talent, embracing discipline, optimizing inventory management, and leveraging data effectively, aerospace companies can emerge stronger and more resilient. Continuous improvement isn’t sexy, but it is what delivers results that shareholders love and a workplace people love. It’s time to drive performance to new heights.

About Seraph

Thanks to our team of specialized operational consultants, Seraph can work alongside manufacturing operations and act as a support structure to add value from day one. Our advisors are former management at many suppliers and OEMs and are experts in production and operational efficiency. Contact us to schedule a discovery call, or see our case studies for more information.

Seraph is a global operations and strategy consulting firm, that leads value chain improvements, restructurings, and turnarounds. We unite the disparate roles in operationally intensive businesses to create efficient operations, bridging the divide from concept to production. High-level decision-makers in manufacturing and industrial organizations rely on us to solve complex issues and launch initiatives that ensure success and sustainable change.