There is growing evidence of a resurgence in American manufacturing. Besides the recent energy discoveries, there are several good reasons why this makes a lot of sense. The US has distinct advantage in this global competition, and this competitive advantage appears to be growing. We found an excellent summary article on this subject from Procurian: The Manufacturing Renaissance: Opportunities and Challenges Facing US Manufacturing Today .
It stands to reason that OEM’s in the US will be seeking domestic suppliers at a growing rate, which sounds like very good news. Manufacturing is a powerful economic driver and if you find yourself in need of a custom manufacturer, please let us know. Proficient Sourcing exists to help find good candidates for you. There are several ways we might be able to help. We learned of yet another last week.
We met with an ex-Supply Chain manager for a Fortune 500 company involved with high precision manufacturing. He told us purchasing often had difficulty procuring smaller quantities of parts from original suppliers once the original production runs had been completed. We can only speculate that this is especially true with foreign suppliers, and we invite your comments on this via our blog. We have several companies who would be pleased to compete for business like this, so if you find yourself in this situation, please give us a call. We’d love to help.
One reason US manufacturing competes well is because seeking productivity gains is in management’s DNA. Long before lean manufacturing became popular, many companies were managing operations with a keen eye towards improving efficiency-continuously. We had personal experience with Procter & Gamble in the 60’s.
50 years ago Procter & Gamble’s very vibrant manufacturing entities were thoroughly involved with continuous improvement—before it had a name. A middle manager there had developed a “Methods Program”, and virtually everyone with any responsibility was measured in part by the contributions made to reduce costs via change. This became a thinking process whereby most operations people would be continuously challenging what they saw in order to find savings opportunities.
Everyone was trained to ask the basic question if it were not for what basic cause, this cost could be eliminated. That expression was drummed into all managers and records were kept of improvements generated by all individuals. The competition was keen. This was lean manufacturing before there was lean manufacturing. And P&G was not alone in this sort of management.
The US has a long history of seeking efficient operations, and not just in manufacturing. Although the recent fall of General Motors is a reminder that failing to keep your eye on the ball can have catastrophic consequences, US companies typically compete quite nicely in many industries. We believe the US is simply the best at continuously questioning things in order to become better.
Another indication of improving health in US manufacturing is the increase in reshoring—bringing manufacturing back to the US. Here is yet another way we can be useful; if you would like to see domestic candidates for something currently made abroad, please let us know.
You may download information concerning reshoring and select any of the 3 terrific articles that were featured in Wire Forming Technology last year. On the left side of the blog you can optin to receive the Article titled To Reshore or Not to Reshore? it is a summary of 3 articles; each is further downloadable via that article; two of the pieces deal with reshoring; the 3rd deals more with velocity manufacturing, which speaks to how to further increase efficiency. We believe you will find value in the piece.
All of this is surely very good news and we look forward very much to participating with you in growing domestic manufacturing.