Why the Aerospace Supply Chain Is Flying Blind — And How Asset Visibility Fixes It

The aerospace industry is recovering. After years of post-COVID disruptions and geopolitical shocks, deliveries in 2026 are almost back to their all-time peak. Order books at Boeing and Airbus are full. Demand for single-aisle jets is running hot. Defense budgets are rising everywhere.

And yet, according to Richard Aboulafia of AeroDynamic Advisory — one of the most respected analysts in the sector — the supply chain is still playing a “challenging game of whack-a-mole.” Production rates are held back not by lack of demand, but by a systemic inability to see, plan, and coordinate the flow of parts, materials, and assets across a fragmented, multi-tier supply chain.

The paradox is striking: the market is growing, but the physical infrastructure supporting that growth is nearly opaque.

At Sensolus, we work with aerospace companies every day to solve exactly this kind of problem. This post explains where the aerospace supply chain is breaking down, and how asset tracking technology addresses those breakdowns — directly, practically, and with measurable results.

Aboulafia’s Spring 2026 outlook identified four overlapping problems that compound each other and resist easy fixes. Understanding them is the first step to solving them.

Material and parts shortages running deeper than expected. Some raw materials — steel is the most cited example — carry lead times of up to 24 months. Tier 3 suppliers are struggling to produce high-volume commodities at rates that can support an OEM ramp-up. The bottleneck is not just capacity; it is the inability to predict when materials will arrive, where they are in transit, and how long they have been sitting idle at various points in the chain.

A skills gap that makes manual processes unsustainable. Early retirements during COVID left the workforce younger and less experienced. Labour-intensive activities — airframe assembly, engine manufacturing, aerostructures — are suffering most. The result is that any process still dependent on manual counting, physical inspection, or paper-based logistics is both slower and more error-prone than it was five years ago.

Under-investment in capacity at the lower tiers. Tier 2 and Tier 3 suppliers have not expanded capacity because the business case is too uncertain. OEM rate projections change frequently, and with thin margins and no aftermarket exposure, lower-tier aerostructures suppliers have little financial cushion to invest ahead of demand. Without real operational data — cycle times, asset utilisation, throughput rates — they cannot make a credible case for expansion to OEM procurement teams.

Conflicted business models that discourage transparency. Engine OEMs are disincentivised to maximise production volume because it hurts their highly profitable aftermarket. Aerostructures suppliers face volatile rates with no buffer. Aviation regulators (FAA and EASA) are understaffed, slowing certification — itself partly caused by the difficulty of compiling accurate traceability documentation from fragmented supply chains. Everyone is busy, everyone is constrained, and nobody has a shared view of what is actually happening.

The result is a supply chain that reacts to disruptions rather than anticipating them — exactly the “whack-a-mole” dynamic Aboulafia describes.

These four problems are not independent. They share a common root: the aerospace supply chain, particularly below the first tier, operates with remarkably little real-time visibility.

OEMs do not know exactly where parts are in transit. First-tier integrators cannot see delays forming at Tier 2 suppliers before they become production stoppages. Tier 3 suppliers cannot prove their capacity to OEM procurement teams because they lack objective data about their own operations. Assets — tools, jigs, fixtures, stillages, containers, returnable transport items — circulate across dozens of facilities with no systematic tracking. Buffer stock is built up everywhere to compensate for the unknown.

This opacity is expensive. It drives excess inventory, delays decision-making, inflates safety stock, and makes it nearly impossible to identify where interventions would have the most impact.

Sensolus provides asset tracking that is purpose-built for industrial operations: rugged, low-power IoT trackers that work across every mode of transport, indoors and outdoors, without requiring Wi-Fi infrastructure at every supplier facility. One platform. Complete visibility. Deployable in weeks.

Here is how that capability maps directly onto the structural problems in the aerospace supply chain.

Eliminating the buffer stock caused by lost and idle assets

Aerospace manufacturers rely heavily on Returnable Transport Packaging (RTP) — stillages, jigs, tool trolleys, production racks, and specialised containers that travel between suppliers, sub-assemblers, and final assembly lines. When these assets get lost, delayed, or simply parked in the wrong place, the response is always the same: buy more. With Sensolus, every asset is visible at all times. Location, dwell time, movement history — all available in real time. After deployment, customers consistently recover a meaningful share of their RTP fleet — assets that were idle or misplaced without anyone knowing. That recovered capacity directly reduces the buffer stock that companies were maintaining to compensate for losses.

Giving OEMs visibility into their supply chain — all the way to Tier 3

One of the more powerful dynamics in the aerospace supply chain is OEM-driven packaging standardisation. When an OEM like Airbus mandates the use of its own standardised RTPs across Tier 2 and Tier 3 suppliers, those assets become a tracking surface. Sensolus attaches to that packaging and logs every movement — from intake to processing to outbound — creating an auditable, date-stamped operational record that flows back to the OEM. This is exactly the kind of end-to-end supply chain visibility OEMs are looking for: objective data on real cycle times, throughput rates, and where bottlenecks sit, without relying on self-reported figures from each supplier tier.

Supporting operational traceability across the supply chain

Sensolus helps build visibility into where assets have been along their journey — which facilities they passed through, how long they spent there, and under what conditions. That operational record builds up automatically, without extra work at the point of use, as a natural byproduct of the tracking that supply chain teams already rely on. For teams managing complex multi-site flows, this kind of structured data trail is increasingly valuable when demonstrating process consistency to customers and auditors.

Giving procurement teams an early warning system for supply disruptions

Aboulafia’s geopolitical risk model shows that even a 3–6 month external shock — a conflict escalation, a major tariff move — can cascade into a K-shaped disruption of the entire aerospace supply chain. The OEMs and tier-one integrators that manage this best are those who see the slowdowns forming earliest. Sensolus data — asset dwell times increasing, container flows slowing, stock levels at intermediate points deviating from expected patterns — provides exactly that early warning signal. Procurement teams can act before a slow flow becomes a line stoppage.

Reducing FOD risk and dependency on experienced staff

Foreign Object Debris (FOD) — tools, hardware, or equipment left unsecured near or inside aircraft during manufacturing or maintenance — is one of the most serious and costly risks in aerospace production. With a younger, less experienced workforce across the industry, any process that relies on institutional knowledge to account for tools and equipment is a potential FOD risk. Sensolus replaces that reliance on individual awareness with automated, always-on visibility: every tool trolley, every piece of ground support equipment, tracked and accounted for. This is not just about efficiency; it is about safety and compliance in an environment where experienced logistics staff are increasingly hard to retain.

The Next-Generation Single Aisle (NGSA) — the successor programme to today’s A320 and 737 families, targeting roughly 20% improvement in fuel efficiency — is the most strategically significant aircraft development programme of the coming decade. Aboulafia’s analysis of NGSA readiness is telling: Boeing’s launch readiness is rated low on supply chain readiness, and Airbus is explicitly delaying to ensure supply chain maturity before committing.

This signals something important. Supply chain digital maturity is becoming a gate criterion for new programme participation. OEMs evaluating suppliers for NGSA contracts will be looking for evidence that those suppliers can scale reliably — that they have visibility into their own operations, that they can provide credible throughput data, and that they can demonstrate process consistency. Sensolus is the kind of infrastructure investment that a Tier 2 or Tier 3 supplier makes today to be ready for that conversation tomorrow.

Aerospace is experiencing a recovery that is simultaneously real and constrained. The demand is there. Airbus alone carries a backlog of nearly 9,000 aircraft against an annual delivery target of around 870 planes — more than a decade of production already locked in. The production ramp is underway. But the supply chain is the limiting factor — not because the industry lacks intent, but because it lacks visibility.

Asset tracking is not a peripheral add-on to this challenge. It is infrastructure. It is the difference between a supply chain that reacts to problems and one that anticipates them. Between a supplier that can prove its readiness and one that cannot. Between buffer stock that sits idle for months and assets that circulate efficiently and return on time.

At Sensolus, we have built a platform that makes this visibility simple to deploy, straightforward to use, and immediately impactful. From small boxes to large containers, from single-site operations to multi-country supply chains spanning dozens of suppliers — our solution works where other tracking systems cannot, without the integration overhead that slows enterprise technology projects to a crawl.

The aerospace supply chain is at a critical juncture. The window to fix the structural problems before the next production rate increase cycle is now.