HOW TO THRIVE IN THE FACE OF LOW-COST OFFSHORE COMPETITION

You're losing market share and risk being overtaken by high-volume/lowcost offshore competitors. You're doing everything you can to reverse declining sales and eroding margins, but it appears to be only a matter of time before you'll be out of business—and you're not sure what to do.

Sound familiar? If so, not all is lost. Though you might be at a cost disadvantage, you still enjoy the natural advantage of proximity in both distance and time to your end market. And with increasingly demanding customers who insist on "what they want, where and when they want it," your natural ability to respond to customer change might just provide you with a crucial competitive edge.

To capitalize on your advantage, you need to adopt the following three strategies—which offshore competitors will find nearly impossible to replicate:

Andrew Gort is the former executive vice president of global supply chain management for Celestica and has more than 30 years of experience in material sourcing, procurement, production planning and control, inventory management, logistics, and order fulfillment in both the OEM and CM manufacturing environments.
Contact Andrew at Andrew@andrewgort.com.

Effectively eliminate customer order lead time

Offer unique, customized products

Initiate rapid new product introductions

With today's razor-thin margins, traditional measures to help manufacturers implement these strategies—such as carrying buffer stock, maintaining excess capacity, expediting, and rework/overtime—are no longer financially viable. And existing tools and processes such as manufacturing resource planning (MRP) come from an era of sequential, batch-driven environments, so aren't responsive enough to provide the market edge you need. A new approach is required that enables you to respond to your customers in real time. And that's exactly what Response Management provides.

Response Management enables you to:

Respond in real time to multiple customer order configurations—including the identification, ordering, and commitment of components at supply chain lower levels

Simulate various cut-in dates for new product introductions and product revisions so you can meet customer/market demands, identify procurement needs, and optimize inventory use

Facilitate collaborative participation of key players at all levels of the extended supply chain to ensure continuous alignment of supply, demand, capacity, and product Response Management gives users across the organization the right tools to respond quickly and effectively to customers while avoiding the pitfalls and problems that arise with traditional approaches.

Response Management delivers the visibility, information, and capabilities to control costs while accruing the benefits of higher sales and revenue—so your business can increase profits, retain customers, and beat the threat of offshore competitors.