First, while being operationally efficient is today’s mandate for managers, operational efficiency (OE) should be considered a necessary but not sufficient aspect of global supply chain strategies. The reason for this is that OEs are often easily duplicated by the competition, reducing their value over time and forcing firms to constantly adapt new processes in order to remain competitive. Second,as products become more ‘commoditized,’meaning that competitive offerings are almost indistinguishable to the customer,firms often fall back to competing on price,further increasing the pressure to cut costs and find previously untapped efficiencies. Unfortunately, OEs and cost reductions can only go so low before firms begin to discard key resources, including human resources, in their competitive portfolio.They continue to compete on price,a never-ending downward spiral toward zero margins.