Supply Chains: A Manager's Guide

Facilities and Links

A supply chain is basically a set of facilities connected by transportation lanes. Figure 2.1 illustrates one slice of the supply chain that brought you this book. Facilities, shown as rounded rectangles in the illustration, generally fall into one of two categories, depending on their primary function: production facilities and storage facilities. Transportation lanes, shown as arrows, are categorized by their mode of transportation; they include roadways, railways, waterways, sea lanes, air lanes, and pipelines. Viewed in the largest context, supply chains extend from the original extractors of raw materials, such as mines and farms, to the ultimate consumers of finished goods, the people who actually put those goods to ...