How AI assurance is boosting industrial supply chain resilience

As part of Digital Catapult’s focus on driving UK industrial supply chain resilience, the Made Smarter Innovation Digital Supply Chain Hub was created to tackle major challenges faced by the UK’s manufacturing sector by supporting businesses to accelerate the integration of advanced deep tech solutions including those powered by artificial intelligence (AI). In tandem with this initiative, we convened two innovative businesses – Etiq AI and Looper – to assess whether AI assurance can strengthen wider adoption of commercially viable AI-products and services and showcase real-world impact of AI-enabled solutions for manufacturing supply chains. 

Read on to learn more.  

Widescale adoption of AI has the potential to boost UK productivity by more than £119 billion annually. However, for this potential to be fulfilled, the UK will need to overcome various challenges to AI adoption, including boosting employee skills and improving trust in the technology. With only one third of CEOs expressing high trust in AI embedded in key business processes, addressing these challenges is essential for accelerating adoption.  

AI developers can help reduce the trust deficit and overcome skills gaps to derisk their systems with AI assurance technologies. AI assurance refers to the process of evaluating AI systems to ensure they are fair, transparent, accurate, and compliant with regulations. As a growing area of UK innovation, these assurance tools can help companies with explainability assessments, data governance, performance testing, and compliance verifications for standards and regulations, and detecting bias, ultimately increasing confidence in AI systems and paving the way for widespread adoption across UK industry. One company at the forefront of AI assurance is Etiq AI, a UK-based innovator and former participant in Digital Catapult’s AI innovation programme.  Its platform is designed to identify and mitigate bias, improve explainability, and enhance the governance of AI models. As part of an Innovate UK-funded project, Digital Catapult has been working with companies in the Digital Supply Chain Hub – an initiative focused on driving deep tech innovation and resilience in supply chains – to assess how Etiq’s AI assurance tools can strengthen risk management, particularly in support of companies’ decarbonisation goals. 

Looper is a startup developing AI-powered Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) software to help business measure and reduce product climate impacts. It has integrated EtiqAI’s platform to demonstrate how AI assurance is driving real-world impact through significant efficiency gains in model development, improved performance monitoring, early error detection, enhanced collaboration across teams, and bridging expertise gaps. Looper’s time spent on machine learning specific software development was reduced by 10% when using the Etiq AI platform. 

 What initially seemed like a tool for risk mitigation has become a paradigm-shifting solution that has unlocked previously unexpected benefits and innovation potential for Looper.  

Research from Digital Catapult’s Digital Supply Chain Hub found that 70% of large supply chain companies consider deep tech adoption a top priority. However, trust in AI-driven solutions remains a significant barrier – particularly for companies focused on decarbonisation and operational efficiency.  

In sectors where carbon accounting and emissions reporting rely on data-driven insights, the accuracy, transparency, and reliability of AI tools are as essential as financial reporting. And AI adoption decisions for many companies hinge on its trustworthiness – especially when technology impacts tax compliance, customer acquisition, and sustainability reporting. By integrating EtiqAI’s assurance capabilities, designed to enhance data integrity, bias mitigation, and model governance, Looper has demonstrated how AI can deliver reliable emissions data, empowering businesses to make confident, data-backed decisions in their decarbonisation strategies, ensuring compliance and building confidence in AI-powered solutions.  

AI assurance tools support more reliable AI development and offer a competitive advantage by demonstrating robust governance, transparency and trustworthiness. As more organisations embrace deep tech, particularly in decarbonisation and in logistics and supply chains, the ability to verify AI-driven insights is becoming a critical factor in procurement and adoption decisions. By increasing trust and reducing risk, AI assurance solutions unlock productivity benefits across supply chains and within AI development teams. 

Digital Catapult is advancing industrial decarbonisation through the practical application of deep tech solutions, helping companies like Looper to scale and commercialise their innovations to bridge the gap between AI innovation and wider industry adoption.  

Looper’s journey also shows how deep tech SMEs can successfully scale with the right support, ensuring their AI solutions are meeting industry demands and expectations for accuracy, compliance, and operational efficiency. As more businesses look to leverage AI for sustainability and competitive advantage, trusted AI assurance will play an essential role in unlocking the full potential of these technologies.