Plug and Play Supply Chain?

Filed in archive Point of view on December 8, 2005

I read a piece in a book recently about plug and play supply chains. The idea is to design supply chain in such a way that depending market condition changes, you can change your current suppliers and plug into new ones in another place. Unfortunately I'm hearing that this idea of designing supply chains is going to become like a managerial fad. But the point is you can't do that in all the industries. Maybe in fashion companies you can do that but in an industry like auto industry, it's impossible. It will corrupt all the trust and relationship depts between two side...

But what industries do you think it's possible to implement such a strategy?