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Global Trends in Manufacturing Supply Chains
Book

Global Trends in Manufacturing Supply Chains

Springer Series in Supply Chain Management

Jing Wu
Springer, 2025
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Supply chains have always moved goods from producers to consumers on a global scale. But as business professor Jing Wu shows, supply chains are no longer linear. They’ve become complex networks of transportation, countries, and industries. They encompass information and finance as well as physical goods, and are subject to complex, shifting political and monetary relationships. Offering case studies, data, and illuminating charts, Wu explains that supply chains are never static. He demonstrates that supply chains are constantly changing as the world and the global economy change.

Summary

Supply chains evolved from linear to networked systems.

At some point in prehistory, people formed communities and, over time, created what they needed to survive their environment. Eventually, people developed surpluses of the goods they could grow or make, and they came to need things they could not provide for themselves. They ventured out from their villages to exchange goods with others.

By 3000 BC, Mesopotamian peoples traveled significant distances to trade spices, textiles, and luxury goods. By 2000 BC, Arabian nomads used camels to carry goods on trade routes across the desert. Others used ships to transport goods across the Red Sea. In Mesoamerica, people traded obsidian and jade across today’s Latin America. The Han dynasty in China inaugurated the Silk Road. First in individual regions and then around the world, people established commercial relationships and rudimentary supply chains.

Some areas specialized in selling goods made by artisans with localized skills that others lacked. Some achieved cost advantages, often from straightforward factors such as better, cheaper access to materials like silk or precious metals. The more complex modern supply...

About the Author

Jing Wu is a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong Business School. He directs the Center of Cyber Logistics and the Master of Science Programme in Business Analytics.

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