The Boeing Center for Supply Chain Innovation presents...
This video is part of an interview with Prof. Panos Kouvelis, Emerson Distinguished Professor of Operations and Manufacturing Management and Director of The Boeing Center for Supply Chain Innovation at Washington University in St. Louis, about the Global Supply Chain Benchmark Study, a collaborative research initiative of top business schools from around the world. For the complete report, go here → [ Ссылка ]
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BACKGROUND
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For the past 25 years manufacturing offshoring to low-cost locations like China has been the dominant strategy for many western manufacturing companies. This has led to a significant reduction of manufacturing jobs in developed economies. Recently, many manufacturers have reported they plan to bring back at least a part of their global production volume to developed countries. General Electric, for example, announced in 2012 they would relocate manufacturing and R&D of their household appliances business, which had previously been offshored to China and Mexico, to Louisville, KY in the USA.1 Similarly, Plantronics, a U.S. based manufacturer of headphones, shifted production volume back from China to Mexico.2 At the same time companies from perceived low-cost countries have reported investments in manufacturing capacity in developed economies. For instance, the Chinese company Lenovo recently brought back the production of personal computers to North America.
While there seems to be an emerging trend to reshore production, traditional offshoring to developing economies continues to be a viable phenomenon. For example, General Motors recently announced a USD 12bn investment in new plants in China.4 These examples offer just a glimpse of the magnitude of manufacturing location decisions companies are currently making in a wave of restructuring of their global supply chains.
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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
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Despite the growing attention in the business press to reports of companies relocating manufacturing to western countries, there is very little empirical research on the scale of such decisions, their drivers and their impact. Hence, in this study we investigate current trends in production sourcing. Based on a survey of 74 leading manufacturing companies predominantly from North America, Europe and Japan we shed some light on (1) what production sourcing decisions are currently being made, (2) what drives these decisions and (3) what results do they lead to.
For the complete report, go here → [ Ссылка ]
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