Advanced Computing in the Age of AI | Thursday, March 28, 2024

Reshoring is Hot! 

<img style="float: left;" src="http://media2.hpcwire.com/dmr/made-in-usa.jpg" alt="" width="94" height="62" />A firm in California typifies the move to reshoring, a trend that is gaining traction, while on the East coast another company launches a service to put U.S. manufacturers in touch with U.S. suppliers.

Reshoring is heating up.  The rising cost of manufacturing overseas, the decline of the dollar, and the advantages of making your stuff in the market where you’re going to sell it are prompting U.S. companies to reevaluate their manufacturing strategies. 

Just one example in the news recently:  the San Francisco Gate ran a story about a company called Simple Wave, headquartered in the East Bay.  It’s product, Calibowl, a bowl with an inward-curving lip that guides food back on to the spoon and minimizes spills, was being manufactured in a factory in China.  It was the accepted way to go. 

But then, last fall, the company took a hard look at all its costs – including travel, quality control and rising labor costs. They ran the numbers, and found a company in the East Bay, only five miles from Simple Wave, to handle its manufacturing.

The reshoring trend is also spawning new businesses.  For example, at the end of June a Hoboken, N.J. firm called Fabricating Partners launched a portal to help U.S. manufacturers find U.S. suppliers. 

In their press release, the company described the service this way: “Fabricating.com (is) the industry’s new online Request for Quote (RFQ) Marketplace designed to help U.S. Buyers build U.S. Supplier networks and manufacture made-to-order parts. Their (Fabricating Partners) SourceNow platform presents easy-to-use functionality designed to streamline and manage the complexities of sourcing custom-manufactured products, parts, and assemblies. From multi-line RFQs to crucial Supplier profiles, Fabricating.com delivers a productive, paperless system developed to address a critical market need for U.S. Buyers seeking U.S. Suppliers. The web-based service supports more than 250 manufacturing processes including machining, sheet metal fabricating, and thermoforming."

For a manufacturing expert’s comments on reshoring and the globalization of manufacturing, see today’s DM-Report story featuring Mike Newkirk of SAS at http://www.digitalmanufacturingreport.com/dmr/2012-07-06/globalization_and_the_changing_face_of_manufacturing.html.

No doubt about it ­– these days, “Made in the USA.” is taking on a whole new meaning.

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