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The purpose of this paper is to explore how a foreign invested manufacturing company’s (FIMC) components sourcing process evolves in order to improve its supply chain outcomes in the context of China’s processing trade.

Grounded in the theory bases of the international sourcing process and supply chain integration, this study utilizes a single-case-study approach with a small- to medium-sized FIMC engaged in China’s processing trade.

This study identifies three stages of the components sourcing process: simple assembly stage, components localization stage and supply chain integration stage. In addition, the case study suggests that the type of processing trade evolves from processing with supplied materials to processing with imported materials as the sourcing process proceeds through the three stages and the internal and external environments change.

To our knowledge, this paper is the first to focus on an FIMC’s components sourcing process in the context of China’s processing trade. It contributes to a better understanding of how FIMCs progress through the components sourcing process and apply different types of processing trade in China to maximize their supply chain outcomes.

THAT, TO BE SURE, was the cry of the lookout man on the old style whaler before the days when those creatures were found to be an endangered species and steps taken internationally to safeguard them. It was the cry when the harpoon was sharpened and got ready to fire into the soft body of the victim.

THERE WAS A TIME when any self‐respecting British housewife, while scorning the culinary prowess of the French (“Don't they smother everything with sauce so you can't see what it is?) took a modest pride on her ability to turn out good wholesome dishes for her family. She may have been a ‘plain’ cook, but she was eminently good at it.

FOR TOTALLY DIFFERENT reasons, two quite different groups of experts have been forecasting dire trouble in store for British businessmen in the foreseeable future.

IT was in last June of flaming memory that we posed the question “What will the Bullock Committee achieve?” Well, there is still a little hope that this committee, like so many others in the past, will produce a report that will simply be shelved. But this hope is very small.

IT will be with a feeling of profound relief that many, if not most people will have learned that the Government's intention to extend nationalisation to several other industries has at least been postponed. One might be forgiven for the hope that it might be forever.

MANY WRITERS on computers — and not only those who try to explain their mysteries in the popular Press — have been unable to avoid using the obvious punning of fiche and chips. None that we have met so far has posed the equally obvious question: will they feed the world or will they leave it hungry?

UNEASY though it might be — and we just hope and trust it is not merely a truce — the settlement achieved in both British Leyland and British Steel is to be welcomed. Strikes are never pleasant and, in general, there are none who win and all lose. Worse, they all too often leave a feeling of resentment that is frequently fostered and exploited by those who have least either to gain or lose by continual conflict except their personal aggrandisement. It is so easy to wield a big stick when you yourself are safe from any rebounding blows from it!

THERE IS NO LACK of pundits who are ready to tell the government how their plan will reduce the massive figure of people who cannot find work. Our own contributor, Angus Downie, elsewhere in this issue provides his own plan — to force job sharing and make up the sum then earned by each of the ‘partners’ by a contribution from oil revenues.

THE wealth of any country is made up from the sum of the goods and services it produces. But as far as Britain is concerned, successive governments seem to have done their best to stifle this. They have, in fact, drained away the whole—or the greater part—of the manufacturing potential. Profit today is much more likely in the speculative field. By legislation manufacturing has become so restricted that it is almost impossible to start a new business or to continue profitably to run an existing one. To do so is fraught with danger. The chance of success is far too small to attract neither capital nor workers.