Building Adaptive Manufacturing for Global Shifts: Partsimony CEO

Discover how Partsimony is transforming the manufacturing landscape by bridging the critical gap between engineering and supply chain management. In this compelling conversation, CEO Rich Mokuolu shares how their AI-powered software optimizes supply chain structures directly from design files, enabling companies to scale production more effectively in an era of tariffs, regional conflicts, and reshoring initiatives.

Rich discusses the fundamental disconnect that has long plagued the industry—where supply chain managers negotiate pricing while engineers see opportunities for design optimization that could dramatically improve yield, pricing, and lead times. He explains how Partsimony's technology analyzes designs to unlock new supply chain possibilities, whether that means finding local Brooklyn manufacturers to retool for ventilator production or identifying emerging manufacturing hubs in Vietnam, India, and Mexico.

Resources from this Episode:

• Connect with Rich on LinkedIn
• Check out Partsimony
• Browse Partsimony's Blog

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Key Takeaways

• Global supply chains are shifting from cost‑optimization to resilience, driven by tariffs, geopolitical instability, and pandemic‑exposed vulnerabilities. Companies are moving away from single‑sourcing and toward diversified, risk‑aware sourcing strategies.
• Manufacturing is migrating toward emerging hubs such as Vietnam, India, and Mexico, as firms rebalance dependence on China and pursue regionalized production models aligned with reshoring and “make‑where‑you‑sell” strategies.
• AI and automation are becoming essential tools for modern supply chain management, enabling teams to analyze complex BOMs, improve supplier matching, and reduce the manual effort traditionally required to plan and scale manufacturing.
• Engineering and supply chain integration is becoming a competitive necessity, as organizations recognize that design decisions directly influence manufacturability, supplier breadth, lead times, and overall operational resilience.

Transcript

James Sweetlove: Hi, everyone, this is James with the CTRL+Listen Podcast, brought to you by Octopart. Today I have another special guest for you. This is Rich Mokuolu, CEO of Partsimony, a fascinating company. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Great to have you.

Rich Mokuolu: Thanks. Thanks a lot for having me, James.

James Sweetlove: Anytime. So, just to start, do you want to tell us a little bit about Partsimony, its company story, and your background and career?

Rich Mokuolu: Yeah, so I'll start with the background, and it kind of bleeds over into Partsimony. My background is mechanical engineering. I cut my teeth in the aerospace industry starting out, and then went into the locomotive, oil and gas, and renewable energy sectors.

Being an engineer, I was also doing supply strategy in those industries. The biggest frustration I had was that there always seemed to be a disconnect between engineering and supply chain. As a supply chain manager, you're negotiating for a part with a supplier and trying to hit a specific number. As the engineer, you're looking at parts thinking, “If we design this slightly differently, we could have better yield, pricing, lead times, and maybe widen the aperture of suppliers.”

Those cycles often took months of back and forth between engineering and supply chain. We said, “There has to be a better way.”

My background as a mechanical engineer—I'll reference the movie Flubber, which inspired me as a kid—I’ve always loved to tinker. I had a dream for a product in the military space, and when I tried to build it, I realized it was incredibly hard to bridge the gap between having an idea, designing it, scaling to production, and improving designs based on supply chain limitations.

That’s where Partsimony comes in. Quite simply, Partsimony helps people produce their products. Our software looks at their designs and uses them to optimize supply chain structure around those designs, then gives feedback on how to scale more effectively.

A key use case was in 2020 when COVID happened and there was a ventilator shortage. China was shut down, and people desperately needed ventilators. We supported a team out of MIT, New Lab, and 10XBeta to manufacture ventilators locally in New York. We analyzed components, identified supply chain limitations, and uncovered new supply chains.

For example, if an enclosure needed manufacturing, could a local Brooklyn manufacturer retool from their current products to ventilator units? That ended up happening, and we supported the team in manufacturing ventilators within two or three months. It got a lot of buzz.

James Sweetlove: That's fantastic. Really cool and beneficial to society.

Rich Mokuolu: We try, we try.

James Sweetlove: So I want to start by talking about manufacturing and supply chain. I know this is an area you've worked in for a while, and things have changed a lot in the last five to ten years. Can you walk us through how the industry has evolved in that timeframe?

Rich Mokuolu: It’s a great question, James. When you look from the 1970s on, there was a movement around maximizing shareholder value. That meant manufacturing as cheaply as possible, which moved manufacturing from the US to low‑cost countries. China was a major beneficiary.

This led to concentration of manufacturing outside the US, Europe, and other historic powerhouses. Today, China manufactures about 75% of the world’s products. But what happens when they shut down due to a pandemic? That was a wake-up call. It highlighted the risk—not just geopolitical or tariff‑related, but the basic risk of functioning as a society.

Even before the pandemic, there was movement toward risk‑resilient supply chains: moving from single-sourcing to dual or triple-sourcing. But because of decades of manufacturing brain drain, the US and other countries have a lot of catching up to do.

Companies generally follow two strategies: one is vertical integration, like Tesla, making everything in‑house. That requires huge capital and volume. The other is a distributed network of component suppliers. But managing that is complex.

Our thesis is that the most successful companies will be those with the infrastructure to be adaptive. You don’t have to be fully vertical, but you need infrastructure that ties your network together. That's what we focus on at Partsimony—leveraging AI to compress months of work into seconds and enabling one manager to accomplish what previously required 100+ supply chain managers.

James Sweetlove: Very effective.

Rich Mokuolu: Thanks.

James Sweetlove: You mentioned before the call the idea of changing success metrics. In the 1970s, success meant shareholder happiness. What would you say it is now?

Rich Mokuolu: Great question. You can't answer it without mentioning the geopolitical landscape. Even before tariffs, there were local content requirements: if you sold a product in a country, a percentage had to be manufactured locally. For example, selling locomotives in India might require 40% local content.

Coupled with sustainability—reducing emissions, manufacturing closer to end users—and national security concerns, success now means balancing product requirements, available resources, and the tech stack and people who keep operations running.

With AI, companies can do things that used to require large teams. But for hardware, you still need human oversight because physical products carry risks. If you get it wrong, it can mean millions of dollars lost.

James Sweetlove: Exactly. It’s not like digital where you push a fix.

Rich Mokuolu: Right. In hardware, a mistake could mean scrapping $500,000 worth of tooling.

James Sweetlove: I want to shift to Partsimony specifically. On your site, you mention algorithm‑generated proposals. What exactly does that mean?

Rich Mokuolu: We help teams do more with fewer resources by combining AI with algorithmic guardrails. If you're a defense OEM developing a fighter jet, we can take a bill of materials with thousands of parts, group them by attributes, identify required manufacturing methods, and match them to ideal manufacturers—whether they're internal facilities or external partners.

A major unlock here is that when budgets are large, suppliers rarely say no. They’ll take the PO, then delays and quality issues follow because they weren’t actually the right fit. That’s why OEMs rarely switch suppliers.

AI bridges that gap by understanding supplier capabilities at a granular level and matching them with parts they are statistically most suited for. Partsimony essentially combines the knowledge of a veteran supply chain expert and a seasoned engineer, with awareness of the global landscape.

James Sweetlove: That makes total sense.

Rich Mokuolu: One of our phrases is “simplify complexity.” Supply chains are complex, but within complexity there are simple governing rules.

James Sweetlove: I want to talk about strategization. Many companies struggle with it. Would you say lack of strategization is a common issue, and how can it be avoided earlier in the process?

Rich Mokuolu: The misconception is that people simply need to strategize better. Usually the problem is lack of information—unknown unknowns. During COVID, supply chain managers didn’t need help understanding things were broken; they needed visibility and better information.

About 45% of supply chain managers at OEMs say they have no transparency beyond Tier 1 suppliers. But real strategy requires visibility into Tier 2 and Tier 3 suppliers—component makers and raw‑material providers.

If you know who your Tier 2s and Tier 3s are, you can form dual‑source strategies, avoid shortages, and avoid panic inventory buildup.

James Sweetlove: Makes sense. I also saw you offer collaborations. What does that mean?

Rich Mokuolu: We focus on unlocking the potential of people by breaking down silos. As teams scale production, we automatically provide feedback on bottlenecks, design limitations, and opportunities to expand supplier options.

We centralize communication—without forcing people off email. We use inbound parsing so email threads generated by the platform get captured automatically. If someone doesn’t want a message captured, they simply start a new email. We don’t monitor inboxes.

We also avoid forcing suppliers onto new platforms—they can simply use a link to provide information. No double opt‑in required.

James Sweetlove: I saw something else on your site: the Reputation Score. What is that, and how does it work?

Rich Mokuolu: Many scoring systems, like star ratings, are too generic. A supplier might be great at one type of sheet‑metal fabrication but not another.

So we created a Reputation Score similar to a credit score. It rises and falls based on verified historical transactions. We focus on what suppliers are good at rather than penalizing them for what they’re not.

James Sweetlove: Very thorough.

Rich Mokuolu: You have to be.

James Sweetlove: You have case studies on your site. Are those available for anyone to read?

Rich Mokuolu: Absolutely. Go to partsimony.com, and you’ll find them. One standout case study is with an OEM in the construction industry. They wanted to reduce production costs and find new suppliers. We helped them reduce cost by 81% for a component—far beyond their typical 10% annual stretch goal.

They thought it was a fluke, so they gave us a tougher challenge. For that group of parts, we achieved over 55% cost reduction. The key is using repeatable processes, data, and AI to unify engineering and supply chain.

James Sweetlove: Incredible results.

Rich Mokuolu: Thank you.

James Sweetlove: Let's talk trends. Any trends in manufacturing that stood out or excited you in the last few years?

Rich Mokuolu: Automation, both software and physical. About 40% of supply‑chain teams are adopting AI. It’s still early, but switching costs are now worth it.

Another trend is manufacturing migration—from China to India, Mexico, Vietnam, and reshoring in the US. India and Mexico are major upcoming winners. In the US, automation is helping bring back capital‑intensive processes like forging and casting.

Also, auto‑quoting is becoming popular. Buyers don’t want to wait two weeks for a quote—they want speed, even if it costs more.

There’s also a shift from cost‑at‑all‑cost to resilience and risk mitigation.

James Sweetlove: What about Vietnam?

Rich Mokuolu: Vietnam is a big winner. They were early beneficiaries due to port proximity and infrastructure. India and Mexico are next, and still developing.

James Sweetlove: Last question: with recent global events—COVID, regional conflicts, tariffs—how have attitudes toward global supply chains changed?

Rich Mokuolu: There’s a deeper appreciation for complexity. People are questioning whether their supply chains are built to succeed in this new paradigm.

Instead of incremental annual changes, teams now ask: “Do we have the infrastructure to succeed?” With Partsimony, we focus on leveraging AI to build adaptive, resilient ecosystems that evolve with the company.

James Sweetlove: The shift from “just in time” to “just in case.”

Rich Mokuolu: Exactly. That’s a great way to put it.

James Sweetlove: If people want to get in touch or follow you, what’s the best place?

Rich Mokuolu: We post supply chain deep dives at blog.partsimony.com. To use Partsimony, visit partsimony.com and sign up. Or email us at solutions@partsimony.com or sales@partsimony.com.

James Sweetlove: And to reach you directly?

Rich Mokuolu: LinkedIn is best. Always happy to chat.

James Sweetlove: Thank you so much for coming on. It’s been a fascinating discussion.

Rich Mokuolu: Thanks for having me, James.

James Sweetlove: Anytime. And thank you to everyone listening. Come back next time for another guest.