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CNC
West
Feature |
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From the Editor— |
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I interview a lot of business owners and managers. And early in the past year I heard a steady stream of complaints about customers taking their work offshore. During the second half of the year, however, I’ve begun hearing more and more stories about how creative businesses are fighting back and in some cases turning around the flow, at least partially. Step one in the process, as usual, is to clearly define the problem. For instance, in the story on page 38 (Flexible QA) the question is asked: if you take away most of the high-volume, easy-to-produce, traditional machine-shop work by shipping it overseas, what do you have left? The answer seems to be a market consisting of customers demanding a combination of services, including complex parts produced in low volumes, at low prices, fully inspected and assembled—in other words, just-in-time manufacturing. But if that’s the problem, what’s the solution? Most people I interview say the answer is flexible manufacturing and inspection systems where one or two people run two or more machining centers fed by palletized load and unload systems, all scheduled by centralized controllers. Technology is not the only answer, however. Educating customers is part of it, too. As noted in that same story, customers need to be taught to compare the “landed” cost of parts they buy overseas, which includes the costs of long lead times, round-trip shipping, the cost of buying higher volumes and maintaining large inventories, the cost of parts lost due to poor quality, the cost of inspection, the whole nine yards. With careful analysis customers can and do see the value of coming home. So, even though it’s not a perfect answer, there still can be a ray of sunshine for those willing to take the plunge into modern, high-tech flexible manufacturing. Certainly the machine-tool manufacturers and software people who advertise in the pages of this magazine are doing their part to give us the advanced-technology weapons we need to fight back. For American shops to win the battle against offshore competition a major shift in attitude is required. We have to face it. The good ol’ days may be gone forever. On the other hand, I personally believe that the end of one good ol’ day is the beginning of another.
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