Sneak Preview2: Surprising Manufacturing Case Study to Be Presented at IDC's Outsourcing Forum

Surprising Manufacturing Case Study Featured at IDC Outsourcing Forum shows how outsourcing is creating more onshore manufacturing jobs.

Readers of U.S. and European press are too familiar with the plight of manufacturers—and how outsourcing is increasing cost pressures and sending even more jobs overseas. What is less known is that leading edge manufacturers are beginning to use outsourcing to increase local employment by making local companies more competitive.

Forum attendees will hear how Midwest U.S. manufacturer Barry-Wehmiller, which was featured in BusinessWeek’s The Future of Outsourcing, is creating a new business that turns around manufacturers by improving their business processes, which makes them more competitive and ends up increasing local employment in many cases. Forum presenter Vasant Bennett is President of Barry-Wehmiller International Resources (BMIS) and a chief architect of BWIS’s emerging service offerings. He spoke to the Global Human Capital Journal last week.

A manufacturer founded in 1885, Barry-Wehmiller knows the pain of struggling with business cycles and surviving by determination and innovation. BWIR began in 1994 as an IT (information technology) services firm that was purchased by Barry-Wehmiller in 2000, and today they provide multifaceted IT and engineering services to Barry-Wehmiller companies and third party manufacturers. They have deep and broad expertise in manufacturing IT, business process design and engineering—and extensive manufacturing-specific IT and engineering resources in India.

Many manufacturers have succeeded by knowing their core business extremely well, but management is often not knowledgeable about how to apply emerging management and technology trends to increase competitiveness, which is where BWIR comes in. They can use BWIR’s resource pool to solve problems quickly. For instance, product life cycles have shrunk significantly in the past several years, which requires manufacturers, who may be accustomed to a 1-2 year cycle, to innovate constantly rather than periodically. They must change their business process.

“You can’t even wait six months to introduce a new product anymore,” Vasant Bennett remarked. “We are helping clients to significantly cut their time to market by using offshore resources to swarm their business challenges: we can pursue several concurrent solutions due to our manpower costs.”

This is a new kind of problem-solving that isn’t feasible for clients using in-house resources. Due to their costs, they usually have a detailed planning phase, which often results in one solution. If it ends up not working optimally, they’re stuck. The swarming approach puts several teams on a problem, and they iterate potential solutions quickly and offer varied solutions.

If you would like to register for The Outsourcing Forum at a preferred rate, download this invitation. In addition, The Global Human Capital Journal will have detailed coverage on emerging trends in manufacturing and outsourcing. Register for email notification for other articles.