International Journal of Engineering and Technology

In order to remain competitive, companies outsource the manufacturing process to global markets. Globalization requires shipping of goods across borders. Cross border movement of goods faces diverse difficulties and creates bottlenecks in the supply chain. Complex products involve numerous parts and complications in the assembly process, resulting in multiple border-crossings with varying level of complexity across multiple countries before reaching to the customers. This activity contributes to the supply chain disruption risk. Border crossing is unavoidable in global supply chains, and how to integrate border crossing complexity in supply chain models is an unresolved issue. This paper suggests an approach to quantify the border crossing complexity and its impact on the supply chain disruption risk in the global outsourcing environment. Results show that key factors which contribute to border crossing complexity include product complexity, trade procedures, and various bottlenecks at each border-crossing. Based on results drawn from the quantitative analysis, we propose several strategies to manage the impact of border crossing bottlenecks. The focus of this research is the manufacturing companies which are involved in managing the global supply chains.