supply chain

noun

plural supply chains

: the chain of processes, businesses, etc. by which a commodity is produced and distributed : the companies, materials, and systems involved in manufacturing and delivering goods

The pandemic has disrupted nearly every aspect of the global supply chain—that's the usually invisible pathway of manufacturing, transportation and logistics that gets goods from where they are manufactured, mined or grown to where they are going. At the end of the chain is another company or a consumer who has paid for the finished product.

—Peter S. Goodman

Everyday life in the United States is acutely dependent on the perpetual motion of the supply chain, in which food and medicine and furniture and clothing all compete for many of the same logistical resources. … [W]hen a finite supply of packaging can't keep up with demand, when there aren't enough longshoremen or truck drivers or postal workers, when a container ship gets wedged sideways in one of the world's busiest shipping lanes—the effects ripple outward for weeks or months, emptying shelves and raising prices in ways that can seem random. All of a sudden, you can't buy kettlebells or canned seltzer.

—Amanda Mull

Examples of supply chain in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

In another video, a vendor who sells power and construction tools outlines the near-impossible nature of trying to import cargo into Iran, detailing a complicated supply chain that passes through several countries. — Billy Stockwell, CNN Money, 20 Aug. 2026

China is building its fuel-cell supply chain for export competitiveness, while India is focusing on low-cost rail retrofits in line with its national self-sufficiency vision. — Jenny Lee,priyanka Salve, CNBC, 20 Aug. 2026

But by the summer, when the company had sought to begin producing the earbuds, supply chain and software snags led Apple to postpone the product until 2027, Bloomberg reported in mid-June. — Bloomberg, Mercury News, 20 Aug. 2026

Carlyle wasn’t the highest bid for Exiger, which maps global supply chains, in 2023, but won the acquisition with a better plan for using its Washington network to grow the company, a person familiar with the matter said. — Liz Hoffman, semafor.com, 20 Aug. 2026

Word History

First Known Use

1948, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for supply chain

• aeroplane
• appertain
• ascertain
• capitaine
• cassegrain
• cellophane
• chatelaine
• counterpane
• entertain
• halothane
• hurricane
• hyperplane