Offshoring is to Outsourcing what a ship
is to a rudder. This analogy is a fine way to help to define the importance of
offshoring. As outsourcing has provided and encouraged open communication and
trade, it has turned the direction of manufacturing and literally moved it. As
companies are looking for a way to continue competing in this new economy,
offshoring has become a vital result of outsourcing. “Offshoring… is when a
company takes one of its factories that is operating” in one place “and moves
the whole factory offshore” or to another country. Outsourcing is taking a function that your
company was doing in-house and having another company perform that task, and
then reintegrating that work into back into your normal operations.
Offshoring is the magnification of
outsourcing, but is also a direct result of it as well. As companies learned
the value and the resource in utilizing skills from across the globe, their
minds were opened to different cultures and different views. As the
manufacturing world became more competitive, it was only natural for them to
consider other avenues of manufacturing. It seems only logical now for them to
consider moving manufacturing plants where “cheaper labor, lower taxes,
subsidized energy and lower health-care costs” can be found.
In between manufacturing and the
consumer lies an intricate consideration in the supply chain. Just as the
supply chain has had to morph to accommodate offshoring, Wal-Mart has had to
morph their actual supply chain in order to remain the competitive marketer
that it is. Wal-Mart, already understanding the value of computers at work and
the applications of the use of the internet looked to the computer to meet
their unique and individual supply chain needs.
“Wal-Mart’s theory was that the more
information everyone had about what customers were pulling off the shelves, the
more efficient Wal-Mart’s buying would be, the quicker its suppliers could
adapt to changing market demand.” By incorporating point-of-sale terminals and
installing an elaborate satellite system suppliers can link into their private
extranet system and how products are moving and when or if it might need to
increase production.
And what the supply chain is to Wal-Mart,
Google is to all other companies. “Never
before in the history of the planet have so many people…had the ability to find
so much information about so many things and about so many other people.”
By providing information and
translation, Google is continuing to “flatten” the world and bring people closer
together and more quickly. It was Google founders Brin and Page who developed a
formula that ranked web pages according to how many other web pages were linked
to them. Google then was able to better link web pages with content and provide
the better answers to searches the consumers were making.
The no class, education, linguistic
or virtual boundaries exist in Google, and this equal access to information
makes it a huge player in our newly flattened world.
As
so eloquently said by Alan Cohen, the then vice president of Airspace, “Google
is like God. God is wireless. God is everywhere, and God sees everything. Any
questions…ask Google.”
No comments:
Post a Comment