Logistics

Welcome back to Business English Pod for today’s lesson on English for logistics and supply chain management. Today we’re going to look at the manufacturing side of the supply chain.

When you pick a product off a shelf at a local store, it’s easy to forget what a long hard road that product has travelled. It may have parts and materials from all over the world. It may be shipped to multiple locations for processing. And once it’s ready and packaged, it may travel long distances to make it to your neighborhood.

This enormous network of information, people, materials, and processes is called a supply chain. And the people who coordinate everything are involved in supply chain management. Good supply chain management can make the difference between a happy customer and an angry customer, and between profit and loss.

In this lesson, we’ll listen to a meeting at a clothing company with a complex supply chain connecting the U.S. and Asia. During the meeting, the colleagues use many English expressions we call “collocations.” Collocations are simply natural frequently occurring combinations of words. A good example of a collocation is “supply chain management.”

Native English speakers use collocations like this automatically. And specific groups of people or fields of work have certain collocations they commonly use. By studying these collocations, you’ll improve your vocabulary and sound more fluent. As you listen to the conversation, try to pick out some of these collocations and we’ll discuss them later in the debrief.

In the dialog, we’ll hear Cam and Tanya. Cam is a production planner for Boston Vintage in the U.S. Tanya is a supply chain manager helping to develop the company’s supply chain in southeast Asia. Cam and Tanya use many collocations specific to supply chain management in their conversation about the manufacturing side of the supply chain.

Listening Questions

1. What is Tanya’s first big concern on the manufacturing side of things?
2. What does Cam say that people on the ground have expectations about?
3. What does Tanya say will increase costs but help manage risk?

Download: Podcast MP3