É transitória ...

Lembro-me de há muitos anos ter lido algures que a Wal-Mart e a China deveriam receber um prémio qualquer do governo americano pelo quanto ajudavam a controlar a inflação.

Em Maio de 2020 citava aqui:

"The deflationary environment created by rising Chinese exports and globalisation is over."

Algo que em Dezembro de 2021 traduzi aqui:

"Com a crise de 2008 começou a desglobalização, o aumento da importância do factor proximidade produção-consumo. Agora, com os confinamentos, com as quarentenas, com as cadeias de fornecimento pouco ágeis num mundo de incerteza...

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Os impactes da desglobalização serão:

• mais emprego; (falta de mão de obra) e
• preços mais altos (inflação)"

Ontem em "Who will pay for the shift from efficiency to resilience?" encontrei:

"Are we entering a new era of wealth redistribution? Or will the imbalances between capital and labour that have characterised the past half century of economic history linger on?

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In many OECD countries, there has been a decoupling of productivity and wages over the past 40 years, during which time business has claimed a larger share of national income gains. 

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Deglobalization, which will favor local labor markets in some industries, is beginning to shift that dynamic. So will the aging population, which will create a structurally tighter labor market as well as millions of new onshore healthcare jobs. [Moi ici: Escrevi aqui sobre como a demografia criará uma ou mais gerações de "Figos" - "Escrevi aqui algures que um dia seríamos (os nossos descendentes) todos tratados como Figos."]

But the third part of the capital and labor story is the increasing pressure on companies to empower consumers and the state at a time of rising costs. Inflation happens for all sorts of reasons, but one of a them is a shift in economic focus from efficiency to resilience. [Moi ici: O que escrevo aqui desde 2008 sobre nearshoring and reshoring e ultimamente sobre o risco político] Both the public and private sectors want to buffer themselves against climate change, geopolitics and market shifts. Changes in supply chains, reserve currency allocations and tax policies are all part of this. But resilience costs money. The question is: who is going to pay?"

Portanto, cuidado com o apagador usado pelos mata-borrões que não passam de fragilistas encartados.

"hay que construir nuevas cadenas de aprovisionamiento regionalizadas” (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

O impacte destas restrições na aceleração da revolução que já estava em curso, traduzido no reshoring:

• Hong Kong pode ficar em confinamento até 2024
• Año nuevo chino: más tensión para el ‘sourcing’ y el consumo al ralentí

Isto vai provocar uma mudança abrupta no paradigma vigente. Que implicações serão sentidas? Como as poderemos aproveitar?

"hay que construir nuevas cadenas de aprovisionamiento regionalizadas” (parte II)

Part I 

"Splits are emerging in corporate America's response to a supply chain crisis which growing numbers of executives expect to last all year, heralding a wave of spending on new capacity, better data, and support for weaker vendors.

This earnings season, companies have complained of shortages, delays, and spiking costs in a quarter in which they scrambled to procure semiconductors, were left waiting for components and suffered the effects of suppliers' staffing gaps.

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The pandemic has pushed manufacturers to redesign their supply chains in favor of certainty of supply and locating inventory closer to customers.

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Companies including VF Corp, the clothing group behind The North Face, said they had moved some production to suppliers closer to their biggest markets.

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Companies with more domestic suppliers and those that had moved before the pandemic o broaden their supply chains were faring better than others with more complex, global logistics, said Tim Ryan, chair of PwC US. mid-January survey of US executives by PwC found that less than half expected supply chain disruptions to ease by the end of the year, and more than 60 percent planned to raise prices in response.

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“The engineers have designed supply chains around predictability and when that predictability goes away everything goes to hell in a handbasket,” he told the FT.

“Most companies are realising that they over-tuned their operation for performance versus resilience,”"

Trechos retirados "Winners and losers emerge from lingering US supply chain crisis"

"hay que construir nuevas cadenas de aprovisionamiento regionalizadas”

"La cadena de suministro sigue sumando costes. Las continuas interrupciones en la supply chain podrían suponer pérdidas de entre 9.000 millones de dólares y 17.000 millones de dólares en para la industria norteamericana de la confección y el calzado en 2022

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En los últimos doce meses, entre los aumentos de costes que sufrieron los sectores de la confección y el calzado en Norteamérica se incluyen el incremento del precio del algodón, que aumentó en un 40%, el de los contenedores marítimos, que se disparó un 300%, el transporte aéreo, con un alza del 50%, y por carretera, que se incrementó en un 20%. 

Todo esto, sumado a la escasez de la mano de obra, repercutió en los salarios de los trabajadores de la logística, el almacenamiento y la venta al por menor, contribuyendo, aún más, a los gastos de todas las industrias en términos generales.

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“Hay diversas prácticas que se pueden llevar a cabo para que las cadenas de suministro sean más resistentes”, señaló Brian Ehrig, socio de Kearney en Nueva York, en un comunicado. “Lo primero es poner el foco en aquellos aspectos que se pueden controlar como nuevas estrategias de aprovisionamiento y una gestión más rigurosa del inventario”, añadió Ehrig.

“A largo plazo, las empresas mejoran su capacidad de resistencia mediante la deslocalización; para que la cadena de suministro sea menos vulnerable, hay que construir nuevas cadenas de aprovisionamiento regionalizadas”, sostuvo. 

A su vez, la creación de plataformas para generar sinergias también podría generar un impacto positivo en la agilización de la supply chain de empresas de confección y calzado, especialmente reduciendo los costes de la cartera de productos cuando se produzca una interrupción en la cadena."

Trechos retirados de "Estados Unidos: las pérdidas por la rotura de la ‘supply chain’ podrían alcanzar 17.000 millones en 2022"

O backshoring do calçado em Espanha

Um artigo interessante sobre a evolução do offshoring e backshoring do calçado espanhol. "Offshoring in the Spanish footwear industry: A return journey?" de Carmen Martínez-Mora e Fernando Merino, publicado por Journal of Purchasing & Supply Management 20 (2014) 225–237.

O crescimento do backshoring é um tema querido a este blogue desde quando ainda ninguém falava nele (2006 e 2010, por exemplo).

Um artigo que documenta as observações que fomos fazendo aqui sobrea a evolução portuguesa. Com uma diferença. Espanha tem marcas com tradição e dimensão e fez deslocalizações. Portugal sempre foi mais terra de subcontratação. No entanto, as razões que levaram ao regresso dos clientes em Portugal, são as mesmas que levaram ao retorno de parte da produção espanhola à Europa.

BTW, lembram-se das previsões de quem não andava no terreno? Dois exemplos: Sérgio Figueiredo no Jornal de Negócios e André Macedo no Diário de Notícias)

"During the 1990'0 and the first decade of the twenty-first century, outsourcing and offshoring became one of the most important changes made by companies throughout the world. Many companies outsourced tasks which were formerly internalised in order to gain competitiveness through reduced costs or increased flexibility or efficiency. Meanwhile, many activities located in developed countries were transferred to other places; production processes were no longer geographically concentrated in one location but were split up into phases which were each located where the advantages to be gained were greatest.
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However, in more recent years, it has come to light that this relocation of production activities is being reconsidered by some industry leaders which has given rise to cases of "repatriating manufacturing to the country of origin". These cases have been called 'reverse offshoring', 'reshoring, 'backshoring', insourcing' or inshoring as opposed to outsourcing/offshoring.
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Three of the four comapnies that have not offshore their production justify this with one main reason: the range of footwear that they produce. The fourth company explained that it was due to the size of the firm. Table 3 summarises the character-istics of these companies. The three companies (Wonders, Pedro Mirages and NordikaT) manufacture only one type of footwear, the mid-high range, and have not considered the possibility of extending their collection with lower-end lines. To produce this type of footwear, highly-skilled labour is required and the companies do not believe that they would be able to maintain the high quality levels that they achieve in Spain if they produced their output in low-wage countries. As production is located in the company's own factory or outsourced to other factories nearby, the company is able to control the entire manufacturing process and guarantee the desired quality levels. These companies commented that they benefit from lower transaction costs due to the geographical proximity (which goes hand-to-hand with more fluid relationships) to the companies that carry out the production activities.
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The fourth company that has not offshored production, Pedro Iniesta - Biostep, provides qualitatively different reasons for this decision. This company's product can be classified within the mid-range, and competes basically on price. As we shall see later, most of the offshoring in this segment was motivated by efficiency reasons (the search for alternative locations to Spain that provide comparative advantages in production costs). The location that offered the lowest costs was Southeast Asia, particularly China. The manufacturing structure of the sector in China requires large batches to be ordered and Pedro Iniesta - Biostep, due to its small size, could not order these large volumes, and continued to manufacture all of its production in Spain. The company has been able to maintain its presence in the domestic and export markets although with a reduction in sales. Other similar firms (with mid-range footwear which did not offshore their production), were not able to survive the price competition of footwear manufactured in countries with lower costs causing them to close during the last ten years.[Moi ici: A mesma mortandade que ocorreu por cá e que descrevemos graficamente em "O emplastro iluminado"]
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When Spain joined the EEC in 1986 and any remaining trade barriers with the member countries were dismantled, the position of Spanish footwear companies did not weaken. This was because the strategy widely used at that time consisted in abandoning the low-range lines which many companies had produced in the past and. specialising in another type of higher range footwear with greater differentiation and value added. This strategy enabled them to compete in the European markets and to maintain their share of the domestic market based on elements other than price. As could be expected, during these years, many footwear manufacturers that produced low-range products and competed on price closed down.
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However, in the mid-1990s, when China was negotiating for membership in the World Trade Organisation, Spanish companies became concerned about the future threat to their positioning. The incorporation of China would lead to a huge increase in exports to Europe of the shoes produced by the foreign multinationals in the sector, mainly from Europe and America, which offshored their production to Southeast Asia? This output was characterised by highly competitive prices and a moderate level of quality due to the comparative advantages in production costs, especially labour. and the enormous scale of this industry in some countries. Responding to these structural changes in the industry, the majority of the larger Alicante-based footwear companies began a process of offshoring production to Southeast Asia between the end of the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s.
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The aim of the companies that outsourced the production of their mid-range lines abroad was to obtain the highest possible growth in sales, based on the increased price competitiveness derived from the lower costs in foreign countries. The revenue obtained from this growth was used to increase investment in those activities carried out within the companies in Spain, such as design, product innovation, marketing, distribution. quality control and the manufacture of high quality footwear. With this strategy, these activities became the core business and internal departments were created or expanded and had a strategic role.
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Panamá Jack and Ras Shoes encountered problems in developing their offshoring strategy due to the type of their output and the characteristics of the industrial structure of the foreign country. Problems arose because they only made small orders and their high and mid-high ranges of footwear required the almost permanent presence of highly qualified technical and managerial staff to supervise quality levels. These companies concluded that offshoring production to China was only profitable if large orders were made as the costs involved in transferring staff were too high for small quantities. Also, large volumes of stock were permanently accumulated in Spain as the minimum quantifies established by the foreign countries were not compatible with the sales of the companies which comprised small quantities of a wide range of models. For these reasons both companies abandoned the strategy and have reshored all of their production activities to Spain and have no intention of manufacturing abroad again.
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The main differences between firms reside in the relationship between the current strategy and the decisions previously made with regard to offshoring. Those companies that order small quantities have reshored all of their production to Spain. However, those that order larger quantities are increasing their manufacturing operations in Spain or nearby countries but complementing this with offshoring and have no intention to abandon this strategy. Summing up, the different "reshoring" strategies observed can be explained by three main reasons. First, the volumes that are outsourced abroad; second, the type of product that is offshored; and third, the improvement in distribution which is also related to volume but also to lead times. From a more general perspective, our results show that reshoring in the footwear industry does not constitute a correction of prior misjudgements.
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First, the cost differential between China and Spain has narrowed due to the evolution of the economies of Southeast Asia. In addition, the demand for smaller batches makes it difficult to exploit scale economies in China or even to gain access to the Chinese shoemakers at a reasonable price. Second, transportation costs have become a key element in this case not because of changes in traditional issues linked to logistics,  but because the demand of the final goods has changed. This new demand introduces conditions (lead times, batch sizes. etc.) that the existing logistic structure does not cater for and even seems to evolve in the opposite direction with the introduction of steam shipping, larger vessels, etc.
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From the results of the study, we can conclude that the reshoring process most likely constitutes a permanent relocation of footwear manufacturing in Spain. This strategy has increased the competitiveness of firms engaged in the mid-range footwear segment and can be expected to prevail in the long term as it fulfils the need to serve new collections with greater frequency. However, if Spanish unit labour costs rise, these increases in production in Spain could be redirected to other nearby countries such as Morocco or Portugal where batch size is not important In any case, the results of the study indicate that part of the offshoring wave should be undone."

Frequência e motivos para o backshoring

Um artigo sobre o backshoring na Europa: "Backshoring of production activities in European manufacturing" de Bernhard Dachsa, Steffen Kinkelb, Angela Jägerc e Iztok Palčičd, publicado pelo Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management.

A vantagem destes artigos é recolherem informação com base em empresas reais (amostra de 2450 empresas apenas) e não com base em especulação. A mim, ajuda-me a calibrar as ideias. Por vezes, valorizo mais ou menos um factor e estes artigos chegam e obrigam-me a reformular e a dar mais peso a uns factores e menos a outros.

Olhando para os dados.

"4.1. Frequency of backshoringIn the countries covered by the EMS 2015, 4.3% of all firms have moved production activities back to the home country between 2013 and mid-2015. The sample includes 105 backshoring firms; these are more observations than most empirical papers on backshoring can provide, but, nevertheless, it makes backshoring a rare event. The highest shares of backshoring firms are reported from Spain (7.9%)
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We can distinguish further between backshoring from suppliers and backshoring from own subsidiaries. 1.7% of the firms have backshored from suppliers, while 2.6% backshored from their own subsidiaries abroad. In a sectoral perspective, the share of backshoring firms is lowest in low-technology industries such as paper, wood, food and beverages, or textiles, and highest in high-technology industries. However, offshoring frequency also rises with technology intensity,
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Further descriptive results show that backshoring frequency rises steadily with firm size, from around 2% in small firms with less than 50 employees to 7% in large firms with more than 1000 employees. However, offshoring frequency also rises with firm size, making backshoring simply more probable in large firms, as they have previously more often offshored manufacturing activities.

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4.3. Motives for backshoringThe most frequent reasons for backshoring of production activities are a lack of flexibility and poor quality, which are both named by more than half of the firms. Unemployed capacity at home takes the third rank with 42%, followed by transportation and coordination costs (24% and 22%) and labour costs (15%). Quality and flexibility show a high consistency as backshoring motives over time, as they have also been the most important reasons for backshoring in the 2012 EMS survey. Innovation-related factors play a minor role as backshoring motives. The perceived loss of know-how in the source country (2%) and the vicinity to R&D capacities at the home base (5%) are the least frequent motives for backshoring of manufacturing activities.
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Firms move production activities back to the home country mostly because of a lack of flexibility, quality problems, and low capacity utilization. Rising labour costs in source countries as a motive to backshore production are, so far, just in sixth place, right behind transportation and coordination costs. The motives for backshoring are heavily dependent on the source country.
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hightech firms are backshoring more frequently, as superior products and quality are inevitable for these firms. They seem to find it difficult to “slice” the value chains for their hightech products vertically into different components, and, therefore, prefer to organise and control them under their own governance in close vicinity to their parent plants, providing additional insights for transaction cost and internalization economics of backshoring activities
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The importance of a production relocation strategy to low-wage countries seems to be diminishing, and local manufacturing strategies seem to be gaining in importance. The reasons to strengthen local manufacturing are, in a way, similar to the main backshoring motives: To reduce complexity and coordination of global supply chains, to provide customised products and services in a flexible and agile way, to adapt to increasing labour costs in emerging countries and the rapid pace of innovations in ICT and advanced manufacturing technologies towards smart and digital factories."