Macropocalypse - Supply Side
"...John Hyatt, vice president of Irwin Brown Co. in New Orleans, a freight forwarder, says many U.S. producers are reconsidering how they operate their vaunted "just in time" systems, which cut costs by reducing inventories to a minimum. "The problem for manufacturers that use [just in time] is that they're really relying on transportation to serve as their temporary warehouse, but that's not working too well anymore."
Very interesting - clearly, there are many drivers; currency shifts, greater security, capacity crunches in emerging markets, etc. The point is that many older systems can't cope with the pressures of supplying enterprises in a (truly) globalizing economy - JIT is probably just the first real example; they will become more and more vivid as they move up the value chain.