The Covid-19 pandemic is shining a fierce spotlight on the vulnerabilities of manufacturing to disruptions in fragile, global supply chains. Professor Rab Scott says that in the UK, as in other European countries and in the US, the problem has not just been a shortage of ventilators and PPE, but a shortage of the materials and parts to make them.
What we are seeing is the effect of a decade and more of globalisation, where longer and more complex supply chains have spread across the world, lured by the pull of cheap labour and low-cost production, chiefly in China and the Far East. As John Glenn, the first man to orbit the Earth, famously remarked…
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