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F. Barry Lawrence
Director, Supply Chain Systems Laboratory

Welcome, Thank you for your interest in the Supply Chain Systems Laboratory. As business cycles continue to ebb and flow, we see production outsourced only to return to where it started. We see capacity gluts destroy manufacturing and distribution margins only to be followed rapidly by capacity shortages and products going on allocation as raw materials prices soar. The business cycle is shortening as firms become more agile. This agility is being driven by improved information management. Manufacturers react more rapidly to market shifts and their distributors must be right on their heels or risk stockouts or bloated inventories as capacity is adjusted in the supply chain. Time is the destroyer in information management since data becomes obsolete fast if not converted into information and knowledge for today's decision-making. If time is the enemy, interconnectivity is the solution. If firms cannot trade information in real-time, the Supply Chain Management movement stops and firms will bounce through the rapid capacity shifts until shaken apart.

Timely information enabled by interconnectivity equals agility.