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

Now, decoupling supply chains are driving manufacturing growth in the West once more, electric vehicles and home heat pumps need to be plugged in, and the makers of AI’s large language models have ever-increasing power needs. —Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, semafor.com, 6 Feb. 2026

Today’s charges target a major producer behind the Chapitos’ supply chain and underscore the commitment of the women and men of our Office to holding traffickers at all levels of the production and distribution chain accountable. —Greg Wehner, FOXNews.com, 6 Feb. 2026

Pichai acknowledged that the company would have to plan for constraints on what would be possible, including those of power and supply chains. —Bloomberg, Mercury News, 5 Feb. 2026

The sustainability and supply chain intelligence platform announced a major upgrade to the Product Impact Calculator, its tool for measuring a product’s carbon footprint and indirect supply-chain emissions. —Alexandra Harrell, Sourcing Journal, 5 Feb. 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
• gethsemane
• halothane
• hurricane