UE News Feature: Outsourcing Goes Inside

[Steve Grube]

Read their webpage-article but it didn't say much about the real
risks to the manufacturers who are doing or considering "insourcing."
My point is that if it is a threat to workers, which it is, owners
don't care much about that.  I think it is best to fight it on terms
of what is the risk to the *manufacturer* or what do they lose in
doing this.  The article had one comment that mfrs may discover
they're shifting costs [to "suppliers"] but not necessarily *reducing*
costs.   So that's the challenge, to list the reasons why mfrs may
lose out on this way of organizing manufacturing.  For instance,
if the *supplier* provides the modular units to the floor, then over
time the supplier is more adept at innovative mfg & assembly practice and
the "customer" [Ford, GM, M-B, VW, etc] falls behind gradually
since they lose in-house floor expertise, which is always
critical to innovative practice.  But there must be many good reasons
to fight this.  (I realize this post begins to straddle some mfg
newsgroup).

-steve grube

Mark Meinster wrote:


> In the manufacturing sector workers are fighting to protect their jobs
> not only from outsourcing, but from new schemes such as modular
> manufacturing, otherwise known as "insourcing"...
>
> http://www.ranknfile-ue.org/uen_0299_outs.html
>
> Mark Meinster