Read this book before you vote!

This is the book to read before you vote in any future elections!

Take Back Manufacturing… An Imperative for Western Economies is about how in less than one lifetime we have experienced the destruction of the manufacturing sectors in our western societies and the significant loss of national prosperity.

We explain how the globalized manufacturing approach, with long supply chains supported by liberalized free trade agreements, has caused the “hollowing out” of our local manufacturing.

The book provides a justification and detailed guide for the reshoring of our Western industries. It has been written for all Western citizens, industry leaders and their governments to understand that Take Back Manufacturing is an imperative for the Western economies to ensure future productivity and prosperity.

The author using many years of manufacturing and business experience, including working in Mexico and China, and a decade of work with the TBM advocacy group, takes the reader through the history of manufacturing and explains in detail with a lot of facts, graphs, and diagrams how the globalized manufacturing approach, with its efficient supply chains supported by liberalized free-trade agreements, has been the business norm for the last four decades, and has been the prime reason for the hollowing out of the Western nations industrial base with the loss of national productivity and prosperity for its citizens.

In many western economies manufacturing has been neglected, with indifferent industrial policies, under-capitalization, and poor development funding. A significant trade imbalance has eradicated many jobs and small enterprises, with most of the production-capacity investment and technological development being relocated offshore to foreign factories. Not only have the western nations lost manufacturing capacity, but also the infrastructure to support the capability for new product development.

However, recent reshoring business models are demonstrating that current and future supply chain total costs have reached the tipping point offering reshoring back to localized factories as a competitive advantage across most industrial sectors. And recently, the Covid supply chain disruption has sensitized everyone to the real and increasing cost, inherent waste, and instability of long supply chains. Also, recent geo-politics has underscored how the dependence on globalized trade will become an economic security risk for the Western world. This realization is now encouraging Western economies to move back to more localized trade blocs, and why for most Western citizens it's time to "Take Back Manufacturing” to gain back lost prosperity.

This book discusses all the political, social, economic, and technological factors that must be considered for Western nations to take back manufacturing, including the investment in education, and technology, and how there will need to be a strong political review of social priorities, immigration strategy, and climate change action, as well as a clear national level recovery plan that will demand a strong political will and national leadership that has the ability to set mutual trade policies with other western nations to form strong localized trade blocs.

The book is not called “Welcome Back Manufacturing.” because for most Western economies manufacturing must be taken back with a focused and coordinated national level TBM policy roadmap and must be embraced and followed by all involved: the political leadership, the industries, the education system, and society as a whole.

A more sustainable future

The book describes how we are now moving toward a universal acceptance at the political level that reshoring manufacturing is a national imperative. And this will be economically desirable to achieve shorter, safer, cleaner, more controlled, more reliable, more secure, and more productive local supply chains that will support the recovery of our national prosperity, and provide an economy able to operate in a much more sustainable fashion.

Shorter supply chains (not long global ones) utilizing LEAN manufacturing principles with new manufacturing technology adoption are the keys to reshoring.

So, the political ask, with maybe some economic inducement and encouragement, will be for our business leaders to get on with it.

Here are the things these leaders need to remember as they look at the business options for future reshoring:

Run the Numbers

First, they will need to understand and be comfortable with the economics of any source change. Onshore versus offshore landed costs need to be reviewed, compared, and indexed looking forward into the future.

It’s clear that, depending on the product, the shipping footprint of long supply chains and the associated costs of transportation and other border/trade activities is much more expensive than we realized.

Certainly, increasing interest rates operating on weeks of inventory in long supply chains that must cross many borders, versus only days of inventory for local supply chains, increases the cost difference in favour of shorter supply chains.

Also, the additional transport packaging and associated docking effort that may be needed if shipping is across a sea or through many transit points can be minimized if the supply chain is local.

Another consideration is the cost of packaging disposal to stage or repack for the end customer may be eliminated.

The additional costs in the form of the bulk storage space that may be needed to hold the transit inventory when sea containers arrive and must be unpacked and redeployed into a business can be eliminated.

Many business risks are associated with long supply chains, including inventory obsolescence and product shrinkage, as well as the potential of delivery delays that need to be factored into the cost savings of going local.

Supporting a long-distance supply chain in a different time zone and culture also may incur an added support cost delta that can be avoided.

Also, the risk of IP exposure and theft by operating in a foreign economy is always a solid consideration.

For these reasons, shorter and more localized supply chains are now typically are less expensive than long supply chains, but it will always depend on many factors, so it is prudent to seek help from experts in building a validated cost structure.

Experts have developed reshoring cost models that can assist a business in getting real and accurate numbers and include all the many cost factors, so they gain confidence when making the sourcing decisions.

Process Improvements

When a business increases local capacity and perhaps starts spending capital, it’s important to make sure there is a clear grip on LEAN principles, so the business team does not automate or tolerate waste in the new processes and operating structures.

This means a whole organization and workforce that is perhaps re-educated and trained on LEAN concepts.

Optimizing New Product Quality

When designing new products, the business must ensure that the new product introduction design process uses Six Sigma and Design For Manufacturability principles to ensure a high degree of compatibility between the product and the process of manufacturing so that its inherently defect-free and highly productive.

New Technologies

Although it is anticipated that in most cases the future cost of long supply chains will tend to outweigh any low-cost labour advantage gained offshore, it’s still advantageous to minimize local labour content with new automation technologies and systems.

Not only will this reduce costs, but it avoids recruiting and training labour that probably is going to be in short supply in the local economy as we experience growth in reshoring manufacturing. And, of course, it further helps reduce any sensitivity to local versus low-cost labour difference.

Future products destined for local manufacturing may not be the exact same products that were offshored. Inevitably, there will be new technology in both the products and the manufacturing processes that may demand new facilities, equipment capital, knowledge, skills, and systems. And these must be fully integrated using an Industry 4.0 strategy.

The real purpose of Industry 4.0 or Digital Transformation is to move the whole business process to a cyber-physical state so that human interaction and effort in managing and undertaking the business process is eliminated or minimized.

This Industry 4.0 strategy requires that the business follows a well-planned road map that involves partnering with business systems and process equipment providers to develop a specific Industry 4.0 Evolution plan.

This must also be front ended with a LEAN transformation journey to ensure waste is eliminated and not part of the final solution.

Partner With Local Supply Chain

A business will need to look at the local supply chains down to the raw material level to fully understand how the local clusters of supply capability can be rebuilt, even if this means significant partnering or investing by government and business in such relationships.

As said, it’s important to look at the business supplier’s own supply chain, and, if needed, the chain feeding it to help ensure the whole end-to-end supply chain is localized as much as practical for optimum short-cycle delivery and lowest inventory.

This will help the whole business supply chain reach optimum cost and delivery performance.

Re-learning for the workforce

One of the issues to be addressed by government, the manufacturing leadership and especially the educational institutions, is the level of knowledge, skill, and experience within the western workforce for manufacturing.

This used to be a competitive strength, but is now a growing weakness, as the baby boomer generation retires. Immigration has not assisted, as most are from third world countries low on manufacturing expertise.

It will require the installation of an Integrated Industrial Learning System that provides a balance between education, training, and experience, to improve the capability of the workforce.

This must support both school leavers and those already in the workforce and generate a strong maker culture.

Support and Funding

It will be necessary to significantly improve the support capability of organizations that provide local technical support and financial funding support to business. The businesses will not have the time or energy to reinvent the wheel, plus, if they are entitled to assisted support and funding this needs to be delivered with far less bureaucracy than in the past.

Climate Change Distractions

The Take Back Manufacturing book takes a hard look at all aspects of what we need to do differently to recover our Manufacturing sectors and gain back our prosperity, and how we must rethink our political policies, economics, immigration, investment in technology, our educational systems, as well as our social institutions and its priorities.

But the biggest impediment next to the significant lack of political will and focus, is the wrong approach to managing climate change being driven by the UN orchestrated IPCC.

So far, we have allowed the political driven misappropriation of science to generate a false consensus that in turn has created a view that we have a climate emergency.

This is generating panic and wrong-headed policies and actions across our western societies.

It is breeding a religious fanaticism that is being boosted by an increasing woke attitude that does nothing to assist our citizens, and certainly does not support future prosperity and national sustainability.

Many scientists agree that the climate is changing, and that we must continue to study it, but many doubt its an emergency that needs a change in our national policies outside of an adaptive approach. And many now state that NetZero climate mitigation is unnecessary, technologically unattainable, economically unviable and extremely foolish.

Also, many new political leaderships are declaring that NetZero is an unnecessary distraction from the need to focus on reshoring their industrial capacity to recover the prosperity for their citizens.

Political Derangement

The other political distractions are associated with national governments being railroaded into global-centric goals set by the United Nations and the World Economic Forum.

These include….

The World Trade Organizations, multilateral trade rules that have disadvantaged the western economies and are now thankfully being overridden in many cases.

The SDG- Sustainability goals, and the ESG- Financial Investment goals are mainly not in the best interests of the western world’s future prosperity and will require prudent and limited involvement by our national governments.

The other distraction is western governments preoccupation with woke thinking and worrying far too much about “who we are rather than how we are doing”

We all hope that this current political derangement in the western world is better managed going forward, so we better focus on the correct priorities to gain back our prosperity, which is the key to harmony in a modern society.

Next Steps

I did not call my book “Welcome Back Manufacturing” because it certainly needs to be “taken back.” And, yes, it will take significant resolution, focus, prioritization, and planning, with the need for a supreme effort by everyone, but it’s worth it for our future prosperity.

 More in the TBM book at:  www.nigelsouthwayauthor.com

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Nigel Southway is based in Toronto Canada and is an independent business consultant and recently authored the advocacy book Take Back Manufacturing. He is also the author of Cycle Time Management: The Fast Track to Time-Based Productivity Improvement, an early textbook on the concept of LEAN thinking and Six Sigma, and how to implement it.

He consults and educates worldwide on Business Productivity Improvement, Advanced Manufacturing Engineering, Sustainable Supply Chain Management, Industry 4.0, National Sustainability & Prosperity, Global technology transfer projects and joint ventures and more.

He has gained experience assisting clients across a wide range of business sectors and industries and helps clients develop a strategy and a vision to attack waste, capture productivity improvements, increase profits, and become more competitive in the global market.

He is a part time professor for Canadian Colleges and lectures on Advanced Manufacturing and Global Supply Chain Management.

He is a past chair of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers and the leading advocate and spokesperson for the Take Back Manufacturing (TBM) Forum, and the North American Reshoring initiative in Canada.                             

www.nigelsouthwayauthor.com