Slowly but surely companies are beginning to realize that there is more to competitiveness than just cheap labor.
Chinese wages and salaries are a fraction of ours [Australia] and they also have
lower construction and capital costs, lower compliance costs and
massive economies of scale through the size of their manufacturing
sector.
However, this year the first signs have also emerged of some light at the end of the tunnel for local manufacturers competing with China. If you are a buyer it may also be time to think twice before embarking on your next China sourcing project.
Heresy! Of course not. Those of us in the lean world have known for a long time that speed and agility trump labor cost any day.
Agility is the key to beat Chinese imports and lean manufacturing the most effective tool to achieve that agility.
Lean enables suppliers to offer faster service, better quality, smaller batch sizes and a greater degree of customisation than traditional manufacturing approaches without increasing unit costs. Lean can drive down total costs for customers by reducing inventory holding and handling costs, obsolescence and the cost of poor quality.
So how about some real analysis to put some meat on those bones? For once, someone has actually done it. To start with, here are the assumptions with the traditional "outsource to China" model.
Based on recent experience importing from China, the team from TXM have have calculated the relative costs to source a "typical" product over a period of five years.
For the Chinese and "typical" local suppliers the test-case assumed that products were ordered in monthly lots with a four week production lead time plus, I also allowed a delivery lead time from China of three weeks.
To reflect the problems that can occur when starting up new suppliers, the test-case allowed for two major quality issues to occur in the first year and one quality issue per year in subsequent years for both the local and Chinese suppliers. The test-case also assumed that a proportion of the stock each year would become obsolescent.
Importantly for the Chinese supplier, the test-case has included the cost of supporting the supplier in China. Often these overhead costs (e.g. the China Procurement Office) are not included in any cost comparison. Interestingly the inventory levels and holding costs are not significantly different between China and the typical local supplier. This is because the monthly order cycle and one month lead time applying in both cases have a bigger impact on inventory than shipping lead time.
Now the "lean" domestic supplier.
For the "lean" local supplier, the TXM team assumed a
weekly order cycle and one week order lead time based on the supplier
having more flexible production processes. This brings down all the
inventory related costs in the supply chain.
In addition, it is reasonable to assume that a "lean" supplier will have better control of internal quality and therefore be less likely to send poor quality parts to the customer and have lower startup costs. Therefore it has been assumed there is one quality issue in the first year one and no major issues in subsequent years. The results of this analysis by TXM are summarised in the table.
And the result?
In this example, even though the Chinese supplier offers a 40 per cent ex-works unit cost saving at the start of the contract, over the five year period the total cost of sourcing the parts is only 1.4 per cent lower than the "typical" local supplier and the Chinese supplier actually works out more expensive than a "lean" local supplier.
It's all about total cost, which includes cost to support the offshore manufacturer in differently languages and time zones, in-transit inventories, obsolescence, less agility to rapidly introduce new designs, and training. This is what some companies, some who don't even claim to be lean, realize. It's how companies like American Apparel can successfully compete against sweatshops in the low margin clothing business from high cost areas like Los Angeles while paying living wages with benefits. If they can, you can.