A.T. Kearney's Daniel Mahler: Companies manufacturing in the U.S. can serve the desire of younger consumers to purchase products that are produced in an environmentally and socially sound manner.
Making Manufacturing Sexy
Manufacturers can’t deal with these issues strictly on their own, Mahler says. To support a manufacturing renaissance, he says the U.S. government needs, for example, to pass immigration reform and support ways to rethink and accelerate education to support the needs of the future manufacturing workforce.
For their part, he adds, manufacturers need to “make manufacturing sexy again as a career path.” He agrees that manufacturing would benefit from rebranding, emphasizing, for example, the opportunities in the field to maximize the benefits of supply chains.
Faced with these decisions, says Mahler, companies should consider more fundamental reviews of their operations. For example, are their facilities in the best locations in terms of taxes or supply base, or are they there solely because of historical precedent? The right execution of a strategic plan and investments, he says, can present U.S. companies with a “mega-opportunity” to leapfrog other nations in terms of competitive advantage.
“It is not just catching up or being almost as good as China, but much better,” he says.
Even with the right policies and investment, Mahler warns, don’t expect a manufacturing renaissance to happen overnight. He expects the transformation to take at least a decade.
“I don’t think it is cyclical. I think it is here to stay,” says Mahler. “But the big caveat is it will take much longer and is much more complex than most people think.”
