You dont hear as much of that recently, except in the petroleum industry. Today, perhaps because of the interlocking nature of the world economy, and certainly because of advances in information systems technology, supply chain is the current industrial phrase of fashion. You may not control the process from mine to manufacturing, but certainly you use technology to lock every supplier, every vendor, every link to the ultimate customer, and every contributing part of your own firm, into one inclusive whole capable of squeezing out excess costs and bringing optimum efficiency to the chain. Dr. J. Edwards Deming gave us the phrase continuous process improvement. Technology paved the way to make the process a continuum capable of unbroken evaluation and improvement.
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. 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.