One more time, it is not about cost!

"In 1969, manufacturing strategy pioneer Wickham Skinner wrote about the missing link between an organization's strategy and its operations. In this provocative Forum essay, Richard Schon- berger and Karen Brown argue that this gap is still very much a reality in that both academics and practitioners tend to subscribe to an overly narrow view of operations. [Moi ici: Aquilo a que este anónimo da província chama de mentalidade da tríade, demasiada concentração na eficiência] In a nutshell, there is still too much focus on efficiency.
...
an excessive focus on costs effectively transforms cost into the default competitive priority.  A case in point: why do we speak and write about “low-cost environments”? Why is one particular performance dimension privileged like this in our conversations about the geography of manufacturing? Has anyone ever written about “high-responsiveness environments”? Why not?
The task of the operations function is often taken as a given and unchanging. But, in uncertain environments, both task and its boundary conditions change over time e static and dynamic efficiency are very different things. Like Skinner wrote on multiple occasions throughout his career, we must not conceive of operations as a perfunctory task e an immediate candidate for outsourcing and offshoring. Rather, it often belongs to the organizational and strategic core of the firm, and as such must remain strategically relevant over time. If the objective is to remain in sync with changing markets, outsourcing and offshoring may well be the worst decision imaginable."

Antes de me sentar a citar este texto dei uma caminhada de 5km por ruas secundárias de Mafamude que não visitava desde 1973.  A certa altura olho para uma série de "lojas": uma de imobiliário, uma híbrida entre a mercearia e a chinesa, uma como ginásio de educação, outra de ... e veio-me à mente o pensamento de que reconheceremos Mongo quando começarem a aparecer nos espaços de loja: unidades de fabricação com 2 ou 3 trabalhadores e tecnologia.

Trechos retirados de "One more time, it is not about cost!"