Ship suppliers are managing to weather the economic storm by putting solid and vetted business partnerships ahead of any major move towards online procurement, according to one of the industry's trade bodies.

To address supply chain threats, 28 percent of respondents in a recent survey said they have shifted from overseas to domestic suppliers in the past 12 months, according to BBK, an international business advisory firm with roots in the automotive manufacturing industry. Nearly 70 percent of these respondents cited transportation, shipping and logistics costs as the most significant factors in decisions to re-shore.

According to a 2012 survey from CAPS Research, nearly 72 percent of organizations expect their total supplier diversity program spend to increase by 2014. To better position minority and women business enterprises to capitalize on this growth, Cintas Corporation is sharing its top five strategies for supplier diversity success.

Automakers like Ford rely on thousands of tier-one suppliers to provide the materials, parts and services to make its final products. Many suppliers serve numerous automakers, and each of those suppliers, in turn, has multiple suppliers. Other industries' supply chains (such as electronics) are intertwined into the automotive supply chain. There are often six to 10 levels of suppliers between an automaker and the source of raw materials that eventually enter the manufacturing process. The breadth, depth and interconnectedness of the automotive supply chain make it especially challenging to effectively manage business and sustainability issues.

The chip manufacturing story has some compelling and awkward moments. For instance, Samsung managed to land Apple as its first massive computation chip customer when the original iPhone was heading to market. Apple needed someone to make the ARM chip that would give the iPhone its low-power consumption and zip, and Samsung said it was up to the task. Of course, the two companies are competitors now.