Ford’s Existing Supply Base
The existing supply base was in many respects a product of history. As the company had grown over the years, so had the supply base, to the point where in the where in the late 1980s there were several thousand suppliers of production materials in a complex network of business relationships. Suppliers were picked primarily on the basis of cost, and little regard was given to overall supply chain costs, including the complexity of dealing with such a large network of suppliers.