Supply chains complex reality

Yet it cannot be assumed that any particular safety will cascade down the management and supply chains to the sites and then manifest, unchanged, as safety in practice. In fact, it is very unlikely that this is ever the case - the establishment of safety in the office does not necessitate its emergence on our sites. A better understanding of the complexities and incoherence of safety within the site environment is needed, and the rest of this book now seeks to explore safety on sites through the shared understandings of those who work on sites every day. Rather than measure policy or evaluate management systems, exploration is made of actual practice, and how people consider and position safety within their lived realities of the construction site environment. 

Supply chain management by definition is about the management of relationships across complex networks of companies that, whilst legally independent, are in reality interdependent. Successful supply chains will be those that are governed by a constant search for win-win solutions based upon mutuality and trust. This is not a model of relationships that has typically prevailed in the past. It is one that will have to prevail in the future as supply chain competition becomes the norm. 

We have several times in previous chapters suggested that rather than refer to supply chains we should talk instead about networks. The idea of a chain suggests a series of linear one-to-one relationships whereas the reality is that the focal firm lies at the centre of a complex web of interconnected and interrelated yet independent entities. 

The conventional business model has al ways been that companies succeed or fail on the basis of their own resources and competencies. However, as the trend to outsourcing has increased, there has come a realisation that the competitive vehicle is no longer the individual firm but rather the supply chain of which that firm is a member. Whereas once a single firm might encompass almost the whole supply chain, today that is no longer the case. Instead, today the company finds itself a member of an extended enterprise . This extended enterprise is in reality a complex network of specialist providers of resources and competencies. The companies that will be the most successful in this era of network competition will be those that are best able to utilise the resources and competencies of other partners across the network. 

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