LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Crossword Cybersecurity has won an Innovate UK grant for £0.16m, it announced on Tuesday, to investigate issues around effective manufacturing supply chain risk management and possible solutions.
The AIM-traded firm said that specifically, it wanted to identify reasons why, according to the GEODIS 2017 Supply Chain Worldwide survey, just 6% of companies had achieved full supply-chain visibility.

It said itself, its academic partner, and two "well-known" British manufacturing businesses would investigate the reasons why organisations were reluctant to share details of their supply chains with their customers, and propose solutions to those problems based around its 'Rizikon Assurance' platform.

Crossword said organisations needed to control all risks in their supply chains, including cybersecurity, business continuity and modern slavery.

The shift to more dynamic supply chains driven by 'just-in-time' manufacturing, Covid-19, Brexit and changing environmental, social and governance (ESG) requirements had intensified that need, the board said.

It said the lack of full supply chain visibility was restricting the ability of organisations to identify and manage their supply chain risk.

The company's portion of the grant awarded by the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund totalled £0.16m, with the board saying the challenge aimed to bring together the UK's "world leading" research with business, to meet major industrial and societal challenges.

"We believe that a radically new approach to supply chain risk management can improve the UK's economic performance significantly," said chief product officer Jake Holloway.

"This feasibility study will look at the root causes of why manufacturing businesses can't always have full supply chain visibility, often caused by commercial confidentiality and lack of standards in supply chain risk systems.

"We'll propose and prototype solutions - be they methods, standards or systems - with our academic and manufacturing partners, and then plan on incorporating the solutions into our Rizikon product family."

At 0800 GMT, shares in Crossword Cybersecurity were up 1.79% at 284p.

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