How Supply Chains Work

A winter coat hanging in a store looks like a single object, but it is better understood as the last stop on a long journey. Its cotton lining may have been grown in one country, spun and woven in a second, and sewn in a third, while its zipper came from a specialized factory somewhere else entirely. The network of farms, factories, warehouses, ships, trucks and stores that carries a product from raw material to customer is called a supply chain, and although it may involve dozens of companies that never deal directly with one another, most of the time it is invisible to the people at its end.