How a readiness score is built
Every score in XTRIUM Illuminate — an outside-in estimate from public evidence or a company-completed assessment — uses the same 13 questions, the same six-level scale, and the same weights. This page is the public reference for that method.
What is measured — five dimensions
Critical-material readiness is decomposed into five dimensions. Each dimension carries a fixed weight in the overall score, reflecting how directly it drives disruption risk and customer-facing readiness expectations.
Material Traceability
25% of overall · 3 questionsCan you identify which critical materials are used, and trace them to program, product, and origin?
- trc-1Can your organization identify which critical materials are used in its government or defense-related products?
- trc-2Can you connect critical materials to specific products, programs, components, or bills of material?
- trc-3Can you trace the country of origin and processing location for your highest-risk materials?
Supplier Illumination
20% of overall · 2 questionsHow much visibility do you have beyond Tier 1 suppliers?
- ill-1How much visibility do you have beyond your direct Tier 1 suppliers?
- ill-2Do you maintain a documented supplier map for materials, components, processors, and key manufacturing locations?
Foreign & Geographic Exposure
20% of overall · 3 questionsDo you screen for foreign ownership, control, and geographic concentration risk?
- for-1Do you screen suppliers for foreign ownership, control, influence, or high-risk geographic exposure?
- for-2Can you identify where your supply chain is dependent on a single country, region, refiner, processor, or supplier?
- for-3Do you have a documented process for reviewing changes in supplier ownership or control?
Alternative-Source Readiness
20% of overall · 3 questionsDo you have pre-qualified domestic or allied alternatives ready to substitute?
- alt-1Do you have pre-identified alternate suppliers for critical materials and components?
- alt-2Do you know which domestic or allied suppliers could replace high-risk sources?
- alt-3Do you have documented mitigation plans for single-source or high-concentration dependencies?
Monitoring & Mitigation
15% of overall · 2 questionsDo you continuously monitor risk and maintain an auditable mitigation trail?
- mon-1Do you continuously monitor geopolitical events, export restrictions, tariffs, shortages, price changes, supplier ownership, and regulatory developments?
- mon-2Can you demonstrate what mitigation actions were considered, selected, rejected, or completed — with an auditable history?
The six-level answer scale
Every question is answered on the same maturity scale, worth 0–5 points. Some questions phrase the levels in context-specific wording, but the point value never changes.
| Points | Level |
|---|---|
| 0 | Not started |
| 1 | Informal or ad hoc |
| 2 | Partially documented |
| 3 | Implemented for priority programs |
| 4 | Implemented enterprise-wide |
| 5 | Continuously monitored & improved |
Scoring & weighting
dimension_score = round( points_earned / (questions_in_dimension × 5) × 100 )overall = round( Traceability×0.25 + Illumination×0.2 + Foreign Exposure×0.2 + Alternatives×0.2 + Monitoring×0.15 )Weights are fixed and are never re-normalized. A question with no supporting public evidence scores zero rather than being excluded, so a company with thin public disclosure scores lower than a company that documents the same practice publicly. That is deliberate: this is an outside-in view of what is publicly evidenced.
Nothing in a score is hand-set. When new evidence surfaces, the analyst moves the affected question to the level the evidence supports, records a one-line rationale with the source, and the dimension and overall recompute automatically from this formula.
Maturity levels
The overall score falls into one of six maturity levels. These describe where a company stands today, and are distinct from the four-step readiness journey (Assess → Illuminate → Improve → Monitor) that describes the work XTRIUM does with a company.
Risks are discovered only after a shortage, supplier failure, price spike, customer inquiry, or regulatory event.
The organization understands its major readiness gaps and highest-risk dependencies.
The organization connects critical materials, components, suppliers, ownership, and geographic exposure.
The organization actively reduces identified risk and strengthens sourcing resilience.
Critical-material readiness becomes continuous instead of periodic.
Critical-material resilience becomes a source of operating advantage and customer trust.
Sources & evidence hierarchy
Outside-in estimates are built exclusively from public evidence, weighted by source quality. Every recorded answer carries a short written rationale citing its evidence class.
SEC 10-K/10-Q, DPA Title III and DoD award records, USGS critical-material designations, government registries
Press releases, investor materials, sustainability and supply-chain statements with dates
Trade press, conference disclosures, customer or supplier statements naming the relationship
Capability claims, job postings, facility registrations — used only to support, never to set a level alone
How missing information is handled
A company that simply does not disclose is scored as absence of evidence for maturity — never as proof of immaturity. Where evidence is insufficient for a defensible estimate, the dimension — or the whole score — is published as “insufficient public evidence” rather than guessed, and a null dimension is excluded from the roll-up instead of scored as zero. This is why outside-in scores are labelled estimates, not audits.
Evidence confidence
Each estimate carries a confidence label describing how many independent sources corroborate it. Confidence is a quality signal only — it is not a multiplier and never changes the arithmetic.
Multiple independent sources corroborate the estimate, including at least one regulatory or government record.
The estimate rests on dated company disclosures or consistent third-party reporting, with limited regulatory corroboration.
Public evidence is thin or indirect. The estimate is a directional read, not a firm position.
How we rate evidence quality
Alongside confidence, each company profile shows an evidence quality rating built from two things: the type of sources behind the estimate, and how much of the readiness model those sources actually cover. Like confidence, it is informational — it does not change the score.
Annual reports and regulatory filings, supplier codes of conduct, conflict-minerals disclosures, published corporate policies. Strongest evidence: attributable, dated, and accountable.
Supplier portals, program pages, quality and compliance pages. Company-authored but less formal and rarely dated.
Trade press, agency reports, and databases. Useful corroboration, but weakest on its own — it reflects what was reported, not what the company committed to.
Coverage is the second half: how many of the 13 readiness questions are supported by cited evidence. A company is only published with at least six supported answers. A profile is rated Strong when at least two company filings or official documents back it and most of the model is covered, Moderate with partial coverage or fewer primary documents, and Limited otherwise.
Outside-in vs. company-verified
Illuminate keeps three score states separate. They are never merged, and a self-reported score never overwrites a published outside-in estimate.
Set by XTRIUM analysts from public evidence only. This is the figure shown in public views to entitled users.
Self-reported answers from someone inside the company, run through the identical maths. Private to the company.
A submitted assessment whose respondent is verified against an approved corporate email domain. Still private; provenance is upgraded, never the outside-in figure.
Self-reported scores usually run higher than outside-in estimates for the same organization, because internal practice is visible to the respondent but not disclosed publicly. That gap is itself informative: it quantifies how much readiness a company is failing to evidence externally.
Your company's data
- Private company information — assessment answers, uploaded documents, member details — is never shown to other manufacturers or to intelligence subscribers.
- Named company detail is visible only to verified members of that company, approved named-intelligence users, and XTRIUM analysts.
- Your data is not used to train shared AI models by default.
- Benchmark statistics are computed from anonymized aggregates only.
Corrections & disputes
Estimates are updated when new evidence surfaces. If you represent a company in the index, you can verify your corporate email to see the detailed evidence behind your profile and propose corrections with supporting sources. Verified corrections are reviewed by an analyst, and every score change keeps an audit trail of old value, new value, reason, and evidence.
XTRIUM Illuminate provides decision-support and readiness insights from user-provided and publicly available information. Scores are outside-in estimates; they are not audits, certifications, or legal or compliance determinations.