Reshoring Manufacturing: Visibility into Data Drives Cost, Quality and Delivery

As domestic OEMs look to re-shore manufacturing back to the United States, it’s critical to remember how contract manufacturing always has to balance cost, quality, and throughput. With the recent difficulties in delivery of product, companies like Ford are taking the leap at developing their own resources to manufacture key subcomponents.

When you’re looking at qualifying new suppliers or contract manufacturers, your engineers will need access to product and process data. The product data will help ensure quality; the process data will help maintain throughput by identifying bottlenecks and predicting yield and quantity. Gaining and sharing this kind of visibility (including in real-time) has traditionally been seen as a cost, a cost ameliorated by overseas contract manufacturers by devoting extra engineering resources to gather data, normalize it, and send it along to partners and OEMs.

With reshoring, it’s less likely that CMs will be able to devote full time resources to this kind of reporting. In addition, OEMs will need better visibility into supply and contract manufacturing resources in order to prevent their own line stoppages due to insufficient quantity or quality of components.

How are you working with your manufacturing partners to improve data visibility and a cooperative, mutually efficient manufacturing process?