The Challenges with Near Sourcing from Mexico Here are 11 reasons why U.S. companies are finding it so difficult to use Mexico as an alternative sourcing partner. In the wake of tariffs in 2018 followed by Covid in 2020, 2021, 2022 … most of the manufacturers who relied on China and other Asian countries for [...]
3 Signs – Optimize Your Supplier Relationship Management Process Juggling suppliers is hard. There’s testing and quality control to contend with. There are lead times to factor in. And there are logistics routes, warehousing, and inventory management processes to streamline. Multiply each of these responsibilities times the dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of suppliers you’re [...]
Flying Blind Back in September and October, suppliers in China and many other countries dealt with electricity shortages, aluminum, magnesium, and silica shortages, in addition to ongoing container shortages. Fast forward to December; we are seeing that. Containers are becoming more available than in the last 90 days, although they remain historically high (Drewry Index [...]
CUSTOMER SUCCESS STORY How can a mechanical components manufacturer provide well-engineered and energy-efficient products to their customers in the face of constrained supply chains? What happens when their parts availability is at the mercy of long lead times? And how can they keep their administration costs (and sanity) at reasonable levels while dealing with hundreds [...]
Rethinking Our Packaging Case Study A BOX IS A BOX IS A BOX … OR IS IT? 4 out-of-the-box lessons learned from rethinking packaging for supply chain. When you think of packaging, what comes to mind? Box? Carton? Crate? All those answers are correct, of course. But packaging is more than just the container that [...]
10 Ways COVID Is Still Impacting Our Lives Today COVID-19. Unfortunately, we were wrong about it. COVID is still here, and it doesn’t look like it’s going away anytime soon. Throughout the pandemic, we blogged about how our teams were handling transitions and staying engaged to enable the all-important flow of goods through various countries [...]
Heavy Duty Pintle Hook Towing Hitch Case Study How we delivered everything to a German world leader in truck and commercial vehicle components wanted from its supplier. Pintle Hook hitch is a seemingly simple application but it carries the load of the trailer or often the vehicles. It bears a lot of static and dynamic [...]
Heat Sink Stadium Light Housing Application Case Study Industry: Commerical Lighting (professional stadium lighting) Company Type: Lighting OEM Light fixture OEMs are challenged daily to compact a large number of LEDs in a tight package. These LEDs emit a lot of heat which must be dissipated away to keep the warranties and shelf life on [...]
Elevator Safety Applications When you’re a global manufacturer of lifts and platforms that transport people, safety isn’t just important, it’s imperative. It means putting product design, quality, and engineering excellence at the forefront of everything you do. Japanese and European companies have taken a leadership position in developing elevators for commercial and residential applications. There [...]
CAN MINIMALISM WORK IN SUPPLY CHAIN? How we helped a commercial transportation OEM simplify their supplier pool. If supply chain were to be described with a single word, it would be anything but “minimalistic.” However, for some organizations, minimalism is not just a good idea, it’s a powerful strategy for improving efficiencies and reducing administrative [...]