376 Principles of Supply Chain Management
From the 1880s until World War I, a number of industries blossomed and saw the growth of
large companies—U.S. Rubber in rubber products, General Electric in manufactured goods,
and DuPont in explosives and chemicals. Companies found there were two areas necessary
in their efforts to expand their sales: (1) a production system that connected the ow of mate-
rials and the processes into a continuous stream and (2) an in-house marketing organiza-
tion that could sell the product into increasingly larger and more remote markets (Chandler
1977). Ford’s focus on the assembly line for automobiles represented the most progressive
movement toward product ow. Whereas companies had used jobbers and agents to sell ...