Acham que a tríade chega lá?

Outro artigo interessante na Harvard Business Review deste mês de Abril, "Europe's Solution Factories". Um artigo onde, em vez da apologia da competição pelo preço, se apresentam exemplos sobre a via da co-criação de valor, em vez da "vending machine" a interacção:

"Until about a decade ago, [Moi ici: Reparem, não tem nada a ver com o euro. Tem tudo a ver com a chegada da China] the best way to make your manufacturing operations competitive was to apply the practices of lean management. But as those practices have become more universal, they are yielding less differentiation in cost and quality.
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This presents an acute challenge for manufacturers in developed countries in Europe and North America. They cannot compete on price; plants in large emerging economies such as China, Mexico, and Brazil come to the table with significantly lower labor costs. And many of those low-cost factories have high quality standards, the ability to produce on a large scale, and manufacturing methods as advanced as those anywhere in the world."

Que estratégias seguem?

"What explains their success? ... They leverage data flows to integrate closely with their supply chain partners; they optimize customer value across the whole chain, not just their part of it; they cooperate with suppliers to rapidly improve their manufacturing processes; and they harness their technical capabilities to offer a high degree of product customization for their customers. In short, they work with partners to manufacture solutions for other partners."

Quando aqui escrevemos sobre interacção, sobre batota, sobre subida na escala de valor, é sobre isto que falamos:

"When all that links two companies in a value chain are product and financial flows, it is relatively easy to change a supplier: You can always look for a cheaper option, which will probably lead you to a low-cost country like China or Vietnam. But when two or more companies are linked by information flows, what was purely a transaction becomes a kind of co-creation fed by trust and loyalty." 

Quando aqui escrevemos sobre a importância da proximidade, é sobre isto que falamos:

"A distant supplier is unlikely to have insight into the exact needs and expenses of buyers. It can perhaps improve the quality and reduce the cost of making the product, but in many situations the direct cost is only a fraction of what customers spend. Smart manufacturers understand that there are other ways in which they can create value for customers; they do not have to base their value proposition only on the quality and price of products if they can help customers add worth elsewhere along the value chain.
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When manufacturers change their product specifications, they may find that faraway, cost-driven parts suppliers are slow to respond. Smart European manufacturers, therefore, try to optimize production for maximum flexibility. In many cases this involves integrating tightly with their supplier or customer networks to rapidly adjust the manufacturing process so they can meet buyers’ changing needs."

Quando aqui escrevemos sobre a customização e personalização, é sobre isto que escrevemos:

"A number of European manufacturers have succeeded by focusing on supplying small-run, customized products. This requires bringing a high level of knowledge and skill to product design."

E na senda do que dizia o velho Engº Matsumoto, para tirarmos a cabeça de dentro do polimerizador:

"manufacturers moved away from an internal focus on improving traditional operations and instead coordinated in a proactive and collaborative way with supply chain partners. As a result, they developed innovative solutions to give the end customer a better product or service bundle. Low-cost factories in emerging countries cannot easily copy this approach, because it requires sharing proprietary data, optimizing the total value-chain costs, rapidly adapting manufacturing capability through integration with suppliers, or being able to deliver highly customized products. Such strategies, therefore, are the future of European competitiveness in manufacturing." 

Acham que a tríade chega lá?
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Andam assustados, querem empresas grandes para competir por quantidades com a Ásia... enfim!