Saturday, October 17, 2009

Outsourcing manufacturing...

Today I am starting with a quick quiz.

Ready?

Question 1) What do you get when you move a factory from inside the USA to a location outside the USA?

Question 2) What do you lose when you move a factory from inside the USA to a location outside the USA?

Question 3) What is the name of this process?

Answers:
1) You get a reasonably equivalent product made less expensively.
2) You lose people that can afford your product (a.k.a., customers).
3) This process is known as: Saving Too Much Money!

Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company (not known as a working class hero), understood that an employee who could afford to buy the product that he or she helps to make increases one’s customer base (a.k.a., growing the business).

A question to promote discussion:
1) How does one’s vendor manufacture an equivalent product for less money, even after shipping costs are factored in, while still making a profit?

Answers may be found in an old post on this very blog!

Continuing… We are in a recession where jobs are disappearing by the millions! How is it going to help the consumers, who are approximately 70% of the economy, when their jobs continue to reappear outside of our country?

If you are angry when you think about what you’ve just read, then you understand the problem and need to discover how you might become a part of the solution; every little contributory effort counts.

If you don’t see a point to this post, then you are probably part of the management teams sending these jobs overseas and need to remember that your job is also able to be done by folks in countries that have pay rates significantly lower than yours.