Pay attention to the little things: keeping your supply chain clean.

“Pay attention to the little things. Learn everything you possibly can about your supply chain. That’s the only way to keep a clean supply chain.”  This is advice from Scott Tannen, a co-founder of Boll & Branch.

You’ve probably never heard of Boll and Branch, but they have an interesting story to tell.  They sell bed sheets.  Can a set of sheets change the world?  By bringing economic opportunity and business to people in places of extreme need, and by policing their supply chain against labor exploitation they’ve created a supply chain that provides hope for thousands.

Scott works closely with an NGO called “Not For Sale.”  Not for sale protects people and communities around the world from human trafficking.  Industry participation is a critical element of their strategy.  Boll and Branch is listed as one of the “Companies We Love!” on the Not For Sale Website, because Scott knows that the textile supply chain is particularly vulnerable to human trafficking and he does something about it.

But it isn’t just an issue in textiles.  Slavery is wrapped up in almost every industry’s supply chain, including the military, tainting the food we eat, the clothes we buy, and the electronics that keep us alive.  (See earlier blog, The Dark Side of Military Logistics: Human Trafficking, March 28.) 

Supply chain professionals in the defense world obsess over counterfeit parts, but these professionals don’t think a whole lot about the people who are doing the stripping and recycling to “manufacture” the counterfeit parts.  Human trafficking and counterfeit parts are two sides of the same coin. After the international drug trade, trafficking of humans is tied with arms dealing as the second- largest criminal industry in the world.

Human trafficking is the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation.

That definition covers a whole lot of ground, and touches all of us.  Like Scott says, pay attention to the little things.  You’ll be surprised at what you see.

Boll and Branch may seem to be really different from the world we live in as military logisticians, but is it really?  Aren’t war zones full of people in extreme need?  Can’t we figure out how to use the spending we do – for our FOBs, for our transportation, for our supplies – can’t we do the same thing?  Are we really certain that our subs in the “non-permissive environment” aren’t dealing in shades of grey when it comes to labor, recruitment, and human trafficking?  Can we open our eyes and see that “counterfeit parts” are part of a bigger problem?

Can’t we keep our supply chain as clean as Boll and Branch?