Another consumer goods maker, the Estee Lauder Companies, lacked the necessary visibility along its supply chain to adequately map demand to production, acknowledged Richard Kunes, the company's CFO, citing a climb in inventory days to 168 at year-end, compared with 150 days at the end of December 2009.

"Given our long supply chain, it has been challenging to accurately forecast the pace of recovery and demand, as well as the rapidly changing product mix," he told analysts. "Also, as suppliers ramp up to meet the more robust industry demand, we are experiencing delays in deliveries of some materials."

Few supply chain hiccups have been as prolonged and public as those at Boeing, which designed its 787 Dreamliner with wings and a fuselage made of lightweight carbon composites rather than aluminum, and a sophisticated electrical system designed to consume up to 35% less power from the engines than traditional pneumatic systems. While the company innovated with the design, it also "reinvented" its supply chain into a collaborative system in which major portions of the new plane were to be built by suppliers around the globe and shipped to Boeing for final assembly. Together, the reinventions were a recipe for disaster.

"When Boeing outsourced things like engineering and manufacturing, one

had to wonder, 'If they are outsourcing that, then what are Boeing's core areas of business?'" says Brett Booen, editor of supplychaindigital.com. "If you do, you run the risk of becoming fully reliant on your suppliers. That's what Boeing did, and now they are paying for it dearly."