The Supply Chain - DesignWork 03
First coined in 1982, the term 鈥榮upply chain鈥� is well recognised, but not very accurate. The word 鈥榗hain鈥� suggests a linear direction, a link from one location to the next, or a link from one material state to another. In truth, supply chains are not chains, but networks. Their links bifurcate and branch into many directions as their products are made and transported. The linear supply chain of any particular material is internetworked with the supply chains of the tools that shape it, the things that package it, and the vehicles or buildings that transport or house it.
This network model of the supply chain presents some challenges for satisfying contemporary consumer demand. Just for example, there is a clear emerging interest in vegan furniture and homeware products, but how can we be sure that not just the product itself, but every branch of a product鈥檚 supply chain network is free from animal products?
The contributors to Designwork #3 have enthusiastically engaged with research, mapping and evaluating supply chains both local and global. Their critical contributions illustrate how contemporary supply chains are complex, and how they are susceptible to breaking, or even causing catastrophe. And yet, they show how there are also strategies and alternatives that ameliorate such catastrophes, or otherwise exert a degree of control with the power to avert their contingency.
Perhaps the first thing to acknowledge when evaluating a supply chain is that supply chains generate waste. As a paper artist, Benja Harney鈥檚 studio material is almost exclusively paper. Coupled with a concern, and perhaps a doubt, that his building鈥檚 recycling services are fit and proper, he turns his paper offcuts into furniture. Dale Hardiman takes the concept of reuse and applies it to home-building. Construction waste is the single largest source of waste in Australia, so Hardiman asks, can builders make furniture themselves from the refuse of their labour? Such uses of waste illustrate that supply chains don鈥檛 end in the making of a single product, and perhaps don鈥檛 ever end at all, but continue forward to include future transformations of material, both wanted and unwanted.
First coined in 1982, the term 鈥榮upply chain鈥� is well recognised, but not very accurate. The word 鈥榗hain鈥� suggests a linear direction, a link from one location to the next, or a link from one material state to another. In truth, supply chains are not chains, but networks. Their links bifurcate and branch into many directions as their products are made and transported. The linear supply chain of any particular material is internetworked with the supply chains of the tools that shape it, the things that package it, and the vehicles or buildings that transport or house it.
This network model of the supply chain presents some challenges for satisfying contemporary consumer demand. Just for example, there is a clear emerging interest in vegan furniture and homeware products, but how can we be sure that not just the product itself, but every branch of a product鈥檚 supply chain network is free from animal products?
The contributors to Designwork #3 have enthusiastically engaged with research, mapping and evaluating supply chains both local and global. Their critical contributions illustrate how contemporary supply chains are complex, and how they are susceptible to breaking, or even causing catastrophe. And yet, they show how there are also strategies and alternatives that ameliorate such catastrophes, or otherwise exert a degree of control with the power to avert their contingency.
Perhaps the first thing to acknowledge when evaluating a supply chain is that supply chains generate waste. As a paper artist, Benja Harney鈥檚 studio material is almost exclusively paper. Coupled with a concern, and perhaps a doubt, that his building鈥檚 recycling services are fit and proper, he turns his paper offcuts into furniture. Dale Hardiman takes the concept of reuse and applies it to home-building. Construction waste is the single largest source of waste in Australia, so Hardiman asks, can builders make furniture themselves from the refuse of their labour? Such uses of waste illustrate that supply chains don鈥檛 end in the making of a single product, and perhaps don鈥檛 ever end at all, but continue forward to include future transformations of material, both wanted and unwanted.
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