Buy American

Distributors must have, and continually gain, market knowledge in order to effectively understand the customers they serve. Two key issues for American manufacturers are the โ€œre-shoringโ€ of manufacturing jobs and the ongoing struggle to convince consumers to buy American products.

Distributors must have, and continually gain, market knowledge in order to effectively understand the customers they serve. Two key issues for American manufacturers are the โ€œre-shoringโ€ of manufacturing jobs and the ongoing struggle to convince consumers to buy American products. The following is a Q&A with Harry Moser, re-shoring leader & chairman emeritus, AgieCharmilles. Harry is a national leader in attracting more of Americaโ€™s youth into manufacturing, in accelerating the trend to re-shore manufacturing jobs, in providing strategies for competing with low wage countries, and in the campaign for government policies that support manufacturing. Industrial Maintenance & Plant Operation, Industrial Distribution's sister publication, conducted the interview.

Could you provide some background as to what your organization is attempting to do with re-shoring?

From my viewpoint, I describe this as promoting and enabling the re-shoring of work. And thatโ€™s not easy. The big companies have policies: โ€˜You will offshore 30 percent of your work to low-wage countries.โ€™ Weโ€™ve had cases where the job shops have said โ€˜Yes, I can beat that price,โ€™ and they say โ€˜No, we have to offshore.โ€™ So weโ€™re finding that itโ€™s not easy to get them to make that mental shift.

So what we do is first try to get them to think about what we call ยดtotal cost of ownershipโ€”TCO.ยด Typically if you were the supply chain manager, youโ€™re told to buy castings or something, and youโ€™re rewarded if you can get the ยดpurchasedยด price of those castings or those machine parts down from what they are nowโ€”down by 5 percent. Do what you have to do. It seems that most of the companies do not add up all the costs associated with their sourcing decisions. Many of them just look at that purchased price. Some of them might throw in duty and freight, so they compare the obvious things, but we believe that very few of them look at the interest for the inventory on the water while itโ€™s coming over.

Weโ€™re going to get our information out to the big companies, and I think more importantly, out to the small companiesโ€”the job shops, the die makers, the machine shops. When they go into a company and the customer says, ยดSorry, the workโ€™s in China,ยด or he says, ยดYou could probably get that work, if you can match the Chinese cost.ยด And what we want the shop to say is, ยดDo you mean the FOB (freight-on-board) price, or do you mean your total cost? Which one do you want me to match?ยด Our hope is that if enough salesmen from enough shops have that discussion with the purchasing agents or supply chain guys, weโ€™ll soften them up, and somebody in their company will say, ยดHuh, maybe we should start making that calculation.ยด

Obviously, outsourcing is still going on. Whirlpool recently closed down its Indiana plant and sent 1,100 jobs to Mexico. What might have you said to Whirlpool if you were part of their outsourcing discussion?

Grant Thornton did a survey in January 2010, which stated 51 percent of companies say offshoring had no or a negative impact on their ROI. So if I wanted to convince a company why they should reshore, I would say, ยดMore than half of those who offshored said it didnโ€™t do them any good, and yet youโ€™re absolutely committed to doing it. Are you sure?ยด

In a lot of cases, we can show itโ€™s in the companyโ€™s best interest to bring the work back here, but if in the final analysis the cost is closeโ€”if the U.S. is 3 percent higher or 5 percent higher, and if all those companies would decide to keep all that marginal work hereโ€”then the U.S. manufacturing economy and the U.S. economy would be strong enough that they would sell more just because the markets were bigger. If more people made their gears here, there would be more demand for machine tools. If thereโ€™s more demand for machine tools, then thereโ€™s more machine tools being made, and they would buy more gears. For U.S. companies for whom the U.S. is still their main market, finally itโ€™s in their interest that the U.S. market be strong. If all of them keep the marginal work here, all of them will be strengthened by that rising tide.

There is a lot of benefit for the country โ€ฆ the total trade deficit was about $800 billion before the recession. If all of that were reversed by having more work done in the U.S. rather than off-shored, that would directly create about 5 million jobs, and for every additional manufacturing job you get, on average, 1.4 other jobs. In principle, youโ€™d pick up somewhere between 5 and 12 million U.S. jobs.

Itโ€™s important to calculate beyond the freight on board costs, and that ties into the TCO that you mentioned earlier. Is there a service available that manufacturers can take advantage of if they want to look beyond freight on board? What extra costs should they consider?

A consultant friend of mine, who happens to work in the outsourcing field, compared the same stainless steel gear sourced in China or sourced in the U.S., and showed that while the FOB price might be 15 or 20 percent in favor of the Chinese, by the time youโ€™ve added in all these other costsโ€”the duty and the freight and the interest, the quality considerations, and travelโ€”the U.S. was 8 percent lower.

Itโ€™s not easy, because itโ€™s 2 percent here, and 3 percent there, and a $1.50 here. And the purchasing agent just wants to say, ยดSave 20 percent. Next project.ยด Now some of that authority is being taken away from the supply chain manager and given to the line manager or the general manager of that division, and heโ€™s saying, ยดYouโ€™re screwing up my availability, youโ€™re messing up my balance sheet, my quality isnโ€™t as good as itโ€™s supposed to be. Iโ€™ve got to put three engineers for two weeks or three weeks each over there, which is costing me $50,000. Iโ€™m never sure when Iโ€™m going to get the stuff. When you put all of that in, I think Iโ€™m better off if we went back to Bill five miles from here.ยด

To help the big companies recognize all of the costs, we have developed a TCO Estimator for parts and tools. The company inputs readily available data, makes a few guesses on the risks of IP loss or impact on innovation, and the Estimator provides the TCO for local and offshored sourcing. The Estimator also projects the cost comparison for the next 5 years, based on expected differences in wage inflation and changes in currency values.

Thereโ€™s a well-researched field called ยดclusteringยด which shows that innovation, especially the interaction between the engineering department and the manufacturing function, occurs much more effectively when theyโ€™re physically close enough that the people can travel and see each other frequently. When theyโ€™re close, the engineer can help the manufacturer improve his systems and be more productive, and the two working together can work on DFMA (Designs for Manufacturability and Assembly) so that it is manufactured for the lowest cost and the most reliability and easiest assembly.

Everyone says that innovation is the key to the future. We can be an innovation country.

More