Supply chains increasingly define business

The quality of a company’s supply chain is an increasingly important consideration, with two-thirds of business value now locked up in such relationships.

That is according to research carried out by AIRMIC, who presented their findings at their annual meeting in Brighton, UK. As Dr Alan Punter who prepared AIRMIC’s report outlined: “Companies may outsource their activities, but they don’t outsource the risk. Thanks to things like social media, failures in supply chain are now more serious and immediate”.

Citing the example of Boeing, Punter said that whereas twenty years ago 97 percent of its manufacturing was in the US, now only 10 percent of its new Dreamliner fleet is manufactured there. Significant changes are evidently afoot.