The Future of Manufacturing
At TechFutures we don’t really believe in predicting the future. We do, however, look for trends and indicators that certain things *might* emerge in the future.
Valdis Krebs, a locally-based but internationally known network specialist, recently posted on some interesting patterns he’s seeing that balance the cost savings of global outsourcing against the reliability costs of on-time delivery and quality control. Valdis asks,
“How long will Honda, Nissan, GM and Ford put up with unreliable supply networks in Mexico? Not long. Their just-in-time manufacturing processes will just hasten their alarm and planning. When you compare unreliable supplies and increased security costs to UAW wages all of a sudden that unionized Michigan and Ohio auto plant makes more $en$e.”
It is an intersting thesis–one others have been expousing of late–and certainly worthy of consideration as a potentially plausible future outcome. I don’t know that I would be willing to bet the future of the region on it, but I certainly wouldn’t rule it out, either…
What do you think?
July 24th, 2007 at 10:46 am
Oh, I agree Chris… we cannot have a economic development policy that depends upon terrorists to do their part and make foreign places bad for outsourcing.
> MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Up to 1,200 companies in Mexico have stopped
> production because of problems with the supply of natural gas following
> a rash of pipeline explosions caused by rebels, …
Ouf course when these auto plants were built, there were no Mexican rebels blowing up pieces of the infrastructure, but they are there now, and a contingency to be considered in the cost of doing business.
August 6th, 2007 at 5:06 am
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