The Wall Street Journal recently featured an article by Rosabeth Moss Kanter entitled, “How a Decaying Infrastructure Hurts U.S. Manufacturing.” In the article, Kanter asserts that American manufacturing is physical, as goods and products must be moved from place to place, and the industry is being threatened by a decaying infrastructure.
According to Kanter, when suppliers can’t move goods and employees can’t get to work, then manufacturing firms are vulnerable. On recent Harvard Business School U.S. Competitiveness project surveys, logistics and infrastructure remain areas in which the U.S. is falling behind other nations. Yet logistics is increasingly the lifeblood of manufacturing, as companies increase their dependence on supply-chain partners. The strategic advantages that come from supply chain in turn depend upon the smooth operations of transportation systems, including trucks and other cargo carriers, and the quality of the infrastructure on which they run.
