Principles of Supply Chain Management, Second Edition, 2nd Edition

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 ...