Several years ago, an industrial products manufacturer facing margin pressure decided to move a portion of its outsourced manufacturing to China. Today, that manufacturer is reevaluating part of that decision because of lack of schedule flexibility. "We supported our customer's desire to move portions of their manufacturing to China and actually engaged in an alliance with a Chinese manufacturer to support that move," said Steve Johnson, vice president of engineering at Reptron Manufacturing Services (Tampa, FL). "Some of it is continuing to generate genuine cost savings. However, a couple of products are incurring opportunity cost because their weight makes air shipment too costly in terms of actual dollars and sea shipment too costly in terms of loss of schedule flexibility. Those products are being reevaluated for domestic production."
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