The CEO of General Electric on sparking an American manufacturing renewal

Article Type: Abstracts From: Human Resource Management International Digest, Volume 20, Issue 6

Immelt J.R.Harvard Business Review (USA), March 2012, Vol. 90 No. 3, Start Page: 43, No of Pages: 4

Reflects on the changing attitudes of US businesses to the outsourcing of manufacturing processes to low-cost, foreign countries as competitors soon emerged in these countries, shipping and materials costs rose, wages increased in countries such as China, US companies did not control the supply chain, and core competency became an increasingly important issue. Cites the experience of General Electric (GE) which realized that the company’s most innovative appliance-design work is done in the USA, and at a time when speed to market is everything, separating design and development from manufacturing no longer made sense. Records that, in 2008, GE came to the conclusion that outsourcing was outdated as a model for its appliances business, and set about to build in-house innovation capability, lean manufacturing, and a new approach to labour relations in that business and others, creating thousands of jobs and investing billions of dollars.ISSN: 0017-8012Reference: 41AH345

Keywords: Outsourcing, Manufacturing systems, Manufacturing,Organizations, USA