Are we there yet? Many of us look forward to putting 2020 in the rearview mirror. We long for a world post-pandemic. It’s been a challenging year for all industries, even those that experienced a boon during these precarious…
TRADE war and Covid-19 pandemic have exposed the complexity of managing supply chain. In managing supply chain, it is all about finding the right parts from the right suppliers at the right price and mitigating supply constraint risk through second…
It doesn’t seem that long ago, but it was, (October of 2018) that I wrote an article called “What’s Going on at Wally World”, based on the Section 301 tariffs being imposed on Chinese imports, and how it was affecting…
The pandemic has shown that supply chains will need to be rethought, with more emphasis put on supplier diversification, domestic production, and stockpiling. The challenge will be to strike a balance ensuring that a targeted and limited industrial policy does…
As politically polarized as the United States is right now, virtually everyone agrees on one thing. With millions unemployed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the nation urgently needs to create good jobs. In response, Washington appears to be…
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a seismic shift in the global economic landscape as manufacturers move toward more local production and distribution. As supply chains become shorter and more transparent, the combination of edge computing and Industrial IoT (IIoT) devices will help…
Innovation and technology helped manufacturers meet the immediate challenges in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The outcome was both a lesson in bipartisan cooperation and a living case study on the value of Industry 4.0 principles and solutions.…
International health crises have the ability to send shockwaves through global value chains. This column examines how value chains have responded to two previous health shocks – SARS and MERS – in order to draw lessons for the current pandemic.…
The advantages China offers will not become available closer to home and the costs of reshoring are high and often prohibitive. Opportunities for global trade will be a key area for business growth after the pandemic. Technology is pivotal to…
As we prepare for 2021, do we dare reflect on 2020? Given COVID-19 and political drama, we prefer NOT! There will be books and movies to tell the 2020 story, so we’ll let Hollywood take care of that. Instead, let’s look…
There's no shortage of articles that will opine about how tumultuous 2020 was for the economy, jobs, and industry as the world grappled with the impact of COVID-19 on business and daily life. However, there's reason to be optimistic, especially…
Beginning in the 1990s and accelerating after the inclusion of China in the World Trade Organization in 2001, many companies globalized their sourcing and production and embraced lean manufacturing techniques to reduce costs. As supply chains moved abroad, global trade jumped from…
The COVID-19 pandemic was supposed to put the final nail in the coffin of globalization and prompt a retreat into a new era of protectionism. Instead, some are now calling the crisis the Great Accelerator. The drop in international commerce…
Geneva: The Covid-19 pandemic was supposed to put the final nail in the coffin of globalization and prompt a retreat into a new era of protectionism. Instead, some are now calling the crisis the Great Accelerator. The drop in international commerce…
A decoupling of economic and political ties between the US and China is likely to be one of the most important drivers of financial markets in the emerging world during the next decade. Ever since Donald Trump swept to power…
Reshoring continues to be strong in 2020 despite the pandemic and because of it, said the Reshoring Initiative in its latest report. US reshoring is outpacing foreign-direct investment (FDI) this year for the first time since 2014, as COVID-caused uncertainty is…
At a recent Site Selectors Guild webinar, several of the nation's top site selectors shared their perspectives on the future of office projects and other topics in a post-COVID world. EDCUtah's business development team compiled the following summary to share…
Rapid Robotics, creator of the first ready-to-work robotic machine operator, today announced $5.5M in seed funding from Greycroft and Bee Partners. With the first affordable robotics solution for executing simple machine operator tasks, Rapid is helping US manufacturers reduce costs…
Potential Governmental Role in Accelerating Reshoring Some U.S. firms are already reshoring without any government support. A large-scale reshoring, however, may require the government to subsidize part of the capital expenditure (“capex”) of relocating, as well as the higher cost…
For decades, labor cost differences have been a primary influence in the continuous shift of manufacturing production from the U.S. to China. In 1980, the cost of labor in the U.S. was more than 30 times of that in China.…