I visited a SBE recently that supported a Ford production line by placing parts for the build up of an assembly in specially designed containers. As part of Fords just in time supply chain management system, this SBE, whose employees had a whole range of severe disabilities, was providing an essential component to the manufacturing efficiency counted on by Ford to be internationally competitive. They had to think supply chain, or they would lose the contractand people would lose their jobs. Caterpillar Tractor has a similar relationship with a SBE that does its packaging for its world wide parts distribution network. Every SBE that is a supplier to a major business enterprise has to know the business of their customer, has to know where they fit in the chain, and has to know that their businesses and fortunes are now linked in a global competition that will describe both their success.
Firms look for suppliers with established competencies.
Firms also look for opportunities to help SBEs whose social mission is in turn the business of helping others. The SBE, on the other hand, has to look at it as many things opportunity for training and real work for those they serve opportunity for business and a way to gain profits and capital and an opportunity to prove their value as a competent business. A few years ago, as the ground swell of welfare reform swept across the states, a prominent organization representing business published a talking paper on the risks to firms of former welfare recipients entering the labor market. They came up with 13 ways that employees can sue their employer and wondered aloud about the utility of expecting American business to solve the welfare problem. Well, the paper did not go far.