The worldwide commercial aircraft backlog has reached more than 17,000 aircraft in equivalent to approximately 14 years of production at current rates, according to a joint report by Oliver Wyman and the International Air Transport Association. Aerospace suppliers have never had less room for error.
Yet our recent study in partnership with Wakefield Research found that 72% of discrete manufacturers discover critical material shortages only after production delays are already unavoidable. The evidence of what that looks like in practice is already on the record. One manufacturer temporarily removed multiple aircraft from its 2025 A220 production schedule and nearly 10 from its 2026 schedule, as facilities in Montreal and Mobile, Ala., continued to face parts shortages and limited supplier capacity, according to Reuters.
Late detection is only part of the problem. The LeanDNA study also found that 51% of manufacturers take a week or longer to decide on corrective action once a production risk is identified. In an industry where a single missing forging or delayed engine component stalls everything downstream, discovering a shortage too late and then taking a week to act compounds the damage significantly.
Persistent shortages of materials, skilled labor and geopolitical disruptions are keeping the aerospace and defense sector's supply chain under pressure through at least 2027, according to Deloitte's 2026 aerospace and defense industry outlook. For manufacturers carrying that pressure across both commercial and defense programs, the gap between when a shortage occurs and when it gets acted on is where schedule risk lives.
The solution to mitigating this schedule risk lies in replacing reactive supply planning and execution with a predictive, actionable view of supply and demand. The APEX platform by LeanDNA gives aerospace teams earlier visibility into parts that threaten program schedules and provides clear prioritization across current and future shortages. By providing a single source of truth for inventory and shortages, APEX helps organizations like Boeing, Radius, and Safran streamline execution, allowing them to proactively reduce critical material shortages and achieve significant improvements in on-time delivery.
“I’ve never seen anything that gives the visibility APEX gives. I’ve never seen anything that offers everything APEX does in one platform.” -Carolanne Wilson, Head of Operations Supply, Safran
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