Monday, June 1, 2015
TWIF Flattener #8 - Insourcing
Use one of the current events sources linked at http://svhs-hwc-fall2015.blogspot.com/2015/06/approved-sources-for-twif-current.html to find a recent news article that relates to, supports, or refutes Friedman's assertion that insourcing was a "flattener." Your comment should include the title of the news article, a link to the article, and a summary of the article including an explanation of how the article relates to this point. Don't forget to check your rubric for evaluation criteria!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Title: President Visits Wisconsin Factory to Hail ‘Insourcing’ Plan
ReplyDeleteLink: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/us/politics/obama-hails-insourcing-at-wisconsin-factory.html
Summary:
President Obama visited Milwaukee to visit an American manufacturing plant that is keeping its jobs within America. Republican Scott Walker was supposed to meet with President Obama and take the tour with him but suddenly was “too sick” to do so. Obama wishes to encourage insourcing more and more considering now the costs of doing business in America is not much more than doing it overseas. He also wishes to stop the unfair trade practices in China. He made it certain that he did not want American factories to die out, as he did with the American auto industry. President Obama plans to visit more businesses, addressing the issue of piracy.
Friedman speaks of insourcing as a company staying within its country when completing its supply chain (not outsourcing to China, India, etc.). In this article, President Obama visits a factory applying this idea of insourcing and applauds them for keeping the jobs they insource in America, this relating to Friedman’s flattener.
Title: Letting Go Of The Wheel: How Google Is Easing People Into Self-Driving Cars
ReplyDeleteLink: http://www.npr.org/2015/07/31/428158443/letting-go-of-the-wheel-how-google-is-easing-people-into-self-driving-cars
Summary:
Workers associated with Google's self driving car describe how this new technology is a futuristic possibility to avoid accidents before they happen by replacing inexperienced and distracted drivers with an automated program that "drives better than the average driver." In an ideal world, there would be no potentially life threatening accidents, and by replacing the common car with an automated program, Google is trying to provide a safer, more dependable product for us, the consumers. To reassure people of the car's safety and performance, there are several features such as cameras and mirrors that allow the "passive driver" to see what the automated driver sees as well.
Relevance of article:
In TWIF, Friedman talks about in-sourcing, a method in which typically large companies run operations similarly to a supply chain while remaining domestic. By taking out the middle man in business, companies such as Google (although they are a large, global business) can run entire operations domestically and produce their own products such as the self driving car. Now that Google is continuously expanding, they have begun to create cars, which is relevant to Friedman's ideas on insourcing because it is now only a matter of time before Google establishes relations with car manufacturers such as Toyota and Chevrolet and make the products on their own. By doing so, Google could make money while selling their cars for commercial use under Toyota or Chevy's name. Therefore, I believe this article relates to insourcing as explained by Friedman.
Author: James Davey
ReplyDeleteTitle: RPT-M&S veteran eyes top job as takes on clothing role
Link: http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/19/marksspencer-ceo-idUSL5N0ZX3LE20150719
Summary:
This article references how the M&S company acquired insourcing which helped raise its stock price value. The M&S company is a food based company which develops and grows its own products. Davey mentions that by using insourcing as a business strategy the food production profits rose, which in turn made the stock rise to its high price for the quarter.
Friedman described in flattener #8 how UPS created profits by insourcing as well. The only truly noticeable difference is that UPS brought in work from other companies, while M&S acquired work that was originally being done in other companies and expanded their factories to integrate those jobs. Insourcing is flattening the world by one company expanding its territory and using vertical integration to work in multiple fields.
Title: Everything You Need to Know About Insourcing
ReplyDeleteLink: https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2012/01/11/everything-you-need-know-about-insourcing
Summary:
Large manufactures such as Ford and Caterpillar have declared large contributions toward U.S. facilities. These have also occurred with smaller manufactures such as Keen a well-known footwear. This footwear brand has opened a facility in Portland, Oregon moving production from China to its corporate headquarters. They also make bags in California and socks in North Carolina. These are examples of in-sourcing occurring worldwide. Friedman’s example was how, “UPS comes inside a lot of companies now and takes over their branded vehicles to assure on-time delivery, which in the case of Papa John’s includes getting the pizza dough from bakeries to outlets at exactly the right times each day” (Friedman 168). This example of in-sourcing relates to Ford declaring large investments in U.S. facilities. They are using another organizations enterprise to accomplish a task.
Title: In-house revolt
ReplyDeleteLink: http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21629560-big-pension-and-sovereign-wealth-funds-are-cutting-out-middleman-house
Summary: in-sourcing is hard. Internal investments outdid external investments by a few percentage points.