3M has had aggressive growth through acquisitions. Almost all of the acquisitions add new manufacturing sites to the existing manufacturing and distribution networks. 3M is composed of 38 divisions (as of 2011) with significant independence. There are corporate experts in the different functional areas of due diligence that bring consistency regardless of the division doing the acquisition. However, since manufacturing is not centralized and is managed by each division, there is no corporate expert neither for manufacturing due diligence or supply chain.
