ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes a Wall Street Journal article that addresses the need for revitalizing US manufacturing and manufacturing's related supply chain sectors like transportation, warehousing, and retail trade. The profile illustrates the "many-to-many" situation in retail supply chains. The approximately 700,000 manufacturers and distributors in the wholesale trade sector provide goods for sale to the estimated 2.7 million retail establishments. The companies' figures illustrate the diversity that exists in various retail sectors in terms of financial success factors. Understanding the differences is important for upstream and downstream collaboration to improve supply chain processes. Much of what is ultimately sold at retail consists of imports of final products and raw materials. This is shown as inputs into the supply chain. Within the box for each sector are statistics that include the following: the number of firms and establishments or locations and the annual payroll for each sector in billions of dollars.
