Supply chain metaphors

How would you explain a supply chain to someone who’s never heard that term? For fun I asked for metaphors at the very beginning of a SCM course. The responses were just stunning! Some were more close to actual definitions (talking about flows, circles etc.), but others were beautiful analogies… Thanks for the people who agreed to share them, here they come:

“Supply Chain Management is like picking up a paper clip from a can or a bin on a regular work desk – one never knows how many paper clips are connected to the first one, in which order, of which colour or even how they’re connected. Then, clearing the mess up, one learns about the links and the ways the paper clips are connected to each other.” (Alex Kajanti)

“A bundle of grapes, where the individual grapes are all conected to the stem, The stem is the “mother company” and the grapes are the suppliers. Supply chain management looks at ex. the efficiensy of how the individual grape contributes to the stem.” (Richard Varis)

“I could describe SCM as a city, were different areas or points of interests represent companies in the supply chain, and the traffic represents flows of goods, information etc. For a city, smoothness in traffic is important as is different flows in a SC.” (Casimir von Frenckell)

“I´ll probably use a system of the human body, maybe the blood system: it gets all the organes connected (oxygen, hormones, aliments) and allows the whole “machine” to work (live actually)” (Mahjoub Faraj)

“Metaphor: human body; it does not work well as a whole if all the different parts are not working together. A network of different functions” (Jenni Tuukkanen)

“Rainbow” (Ville Kangasmuukko)

Any other metaphors that come to your mind? If so, post them as a reply!

Gyöngyi