Reshoring Lesson #5: Keep Innovating

Innovation is often the result of a very interactive process between engineers, designers and manufacturers. The problem is that once you start outsourcing manufacturing overseas, you can’t maintain that expertise because it is largely drawn from daily interactions with manufacturing. And then, before you know it, you have lost your ability to innovate. This is the sad lesson from years of extensive offshoring. Now that manufacturers are bringing work back home, they are fully aware of the importance of continuous innovation.

Innovation takes many forms. It can be new technology, new processes and methods, new services or simply something that eliminates the need for something else. Ultimately, it is what gives you a lasting competitive advantage. And today, it often starts with big data and analytics that can uncover the answers you need in real time.

Lesson #1- Making optimal decisions

Lesson #2 - Impacts on the supply chain

Lesson #3 - How to manufacture products

Lesson #4 - Manufacturing globalization