Companies say they have effective supplier compliance programs in place. But reality says something quite different.

Multi-tiered manufacturing supply chains can end up in some unexpected places - including prisons.

For most of the past three decades, private equity firms and other investors have relied on two simple questions to assess the supply chains of the companies in which they've invested: Are our companies leveraging low-cost country supply sources and are they keeping supply chain costs in check? Deeper inquiries have always seemed unnecessary, so private equity firms and investors have focused on other aspects of the businesses they own to drive value.

Every supply chain manager knows that moving freight globally is a high-risk business. In a world beset by severe weather events, worsening natural disasters and pervasive terrorist threats - on top of the usual traffic tie-ups, rail derailments and port slowdowns - disruptions are a fact of life.

The dynamics that have long favored China as the world's center of low-cost manufacturing are changing. And no one - not even China - seems to have a problem with that.

What can automobile manufacturers to do stop the endless flood of recalls, some of which result in injury or death to drivers and passengers?