Fit for Future Demands? : Impact, development and outlook of China's logistics infrastructure

Shipping goods and raw materials in supply chains within the required time and with the requisite quality from suppliers to customers is a basic necessity for successful sourcing and procurement. China has become a "Global Workshop" of huge scope and needs to provide well-developed infrastructure and logistics centres which enable the successful management of supply chain undertakings. This article provides an overview of the common infrastructure and illustrates how they continue to be developed, as well as detailing what further investments are being made. Based on demands for logistics, we show how China has sought to satisfy these requirements by increasing available infrastructure over the last 15 years. Finally, we give a brief insight into the satisfaction of infrastructure based on a survey with European production companies in China.