The concept of supply chains has been thrust upon the consciousness of the world due to a crisis brought on by COVID-19 and its variants. In the U.S., for example, flotillas of container ships parked off major ports translate into shortages and outages, fueling inflation. It doesn’t mean, however, that most people understand what supply chains actually are.
A supply chain is the network of companies whose combined contributions result in a finished product reaching a customer/consumer. What constitutes a finished product is relative in that one company’s finished product can be a component of another company’s product. By that lone example, supply chains can be (and frequently are) complex, and can stretch from local to global.
