Add a Comment
Email This
Statistics
RE: Bleeding Dry
The phrase "level the playing field" in your comment kind of scares me, because it sounds like someone in Congress thinks we can use tariffs or something to fix the problem.
I was more concerned with the fact that some foreign governments have been heavily subsiding their manufacturing by means of buying state of the art machines, software and facilities in order to give them a massive head start and allow them "government-sponsored overproduction". (As quoted from the link.) It's more a feeling of frustration and unfairness that many times they don't have to actually pay for capital equipment in order to compete, along with having endless cheap labor. Another aspect of the playing field not being level comes from the relative lack of environmental concerns many companies on American soil (fortunately) are saddled with, although recent developments may eventually change this. Though tempting, I fully agree that heavy tariffs are the wrong way to go about this imbalance; it hurts needed relationships, and your comments on service, responsiveness and being in the design phase as much as possible are right on target.
Making the mistake of spending time and money to make a much more accurate or otherwise higher quality product in some academic sense, gets you nowhere in mainstream manufacturing because as you pointed out, nobody cares as long as it's "good enough".
Turn-around-time seems to be the name of the game now; nobody can get anything fast enough, and this is the real reason American manufacturing needs to invest in automation and other ways to get their products out faster while still maintaining a personal touch.
Years ago I worked in the printed circuit board industry. The president of the company at the time had a great philosophy that eventually worked into a mission statement and company motto: "Total Customer Satisfaction". If you can always manage to achieve this goal, I guess you will always have customers. (He started plating boards in a bathtub in his garage, and 25 years later sold the company for about 200 million!)
As a side note, I will read those Thomas Friedman books the moment I get the chance; I always liked his columns.
RSS
RE: Bleeding Dry
I strongly recommend Lexus and the Olive Tree and The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman, and Innovator's Dilemma (and Solution) by Clayton Christianson. The phrase "level the playing field" in your comment kind of scares me, because it sounds like someone in Congress thinks we can use tariffs or something to fix the problem. It won't work. Neither will trying to get lean and efficient in itself--and I see you know that with the latter portion of your statement about investing in innovation. They can low-ball you to pain levels you cannot possibly endure except possibly through automation, which has the same end-result for many of your employees.
I hate to sound like the Grim Reaper here, but that's pretty much how I see it. Both Friedman and Christianson do more than whine about what a lot of people see as a problem, but show how to make it into an opportunity-although I'm not saying it's going to be easy.
I'm not a business guy, and I don't know anything about your business, but price is not how you want to compete with the Chinese (I know you didn't say that). Christianson says that people are willing to pay a premium when your product is more convenient, performs better, is easier to use, etc. It's when your product and your competitor's product are both "good enough" that it becomes a commodity and they start to compete on price alone. If the specs for something say that tolerances must be within a millimeter, and your competitor meets that, and you exceed it with 1 micrometer tolerances, and his is cheaper, both are good enough and they will buy his.
So...being more responsive? A customer needs something to start quickly and you can turn it around quicker than your competitor? You can custom run small batches fast? Vertical or horizontal integration with other products that use injection molding so you are in on the design process and can respond faster? These are some possibilities where you could compete. Christianson has more with his concept of disruptive innovation--such as competing with non-consumption (more than just finding new markets for your products--new uses).
View Full Discussion