For most of the past three decades, private equity firms and other investors have relied on two simple questions to assess the supply chains of the companies in which they've invested: Are our companies leveraging low-cost country supply sources and are they keeping supply chain costs in check? Deeper inquiries have always seemed unnecessary, so private equity firms and investors have focused on other aspects of the businesses they own to drive value.
Every supply chain manager knows that moving freight globally is a high-risk business. In a world beset by severe weather events, worsening natural disasters and pervasive terrorist threats - on top of the usual traffic tie-ups, rail derailments and port slowdowns - disruptions are a fact of life.
Tradeshift, provider of a supplier-collaboration platform, has partnered with EcoVadis, creator of a collaborative platform for assigning supplier sustainability ratings in global supply chains.
The dynamics that have long favored China as the world's center of low-cost manufacturing are changing. And no one - not even China - seems to have a problem with that.
Apparently, there's a growing worry among many businesses located outside the U.S. in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa regarding the "ethics" of their supply chain partners.
Tradeshift, provider of a supplier-collaboration platform, has entered into a global partnership with C2FO, a market for the acquisition of working capital.