The job I had before I came to R&D Magazine involved working in the R&D department of a consumer products company that had a long reputation of manufacturing high-performance, high-quality products. Unfortunately, the cost of manufacturing those products became too expensive as off-shore competitors produced products for far less money and often at a substantially increased quality level. Our own manufacturing plants could no longer compete, and one by one we closed them and purchased products from our competitors' suppliers. The downfall of this strategy was that as we eliminated our manufacturing capabilities, we—far too quickly—also lost our manufacturing and even design expertise. Without some edge, the products we found ourselves marketing had no competitive edge, no proprietary characteristics. They were duplicates of our competitors' products and far too frequently inferior duplicates.
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