Smarter Sourcing Symposium to Discuss the Future of Lean, Domestic Supply Chains
Buoyed by companies’ renewed interest in domestic supply chains in the last two years, the International Manufacturing Technology Show and the Onshoring Project will present the Smarter Sourcing Symposium in September 2022, the trade show’s first such panel.
Reshoring Initiative founder Harry Moser will participate in the symposium’s panel of supply chain experts. In a statement, Moser noted that reshoring—jobs previously outsourced that are returning to the United States—has jumped in the last decade, and that manufacturers should be aware of the real price tag of offshoring supply.
“Reshoring has surged from 6,000 manufacturing jobs per year in 2010 to 260,000 jobs in 2021,” Moser said in a statement. “Understanding the costs and increasing risks of offshoring have driven that surge because more OEMs see the benefits of domestic sourcing.”
Paul Ericksen, IndustryWeek’s own longtime supply chain advisor, will join Moser and the other participants on the panel to provide a flexibility and lean perspective on current supply chains.
“Corporate executives today are beginning to understand that the purchasing function has the potential to deliver more to their financial bottom line than just through purchased material cost reduction,” Ericksen said. “Supplier order fulfillment agility supports an OEM customer’ ability to maintain customer fill rates and incremental sales, positively impacting revenues. In other words, there is a strong business case that can be made that in assigning business OEMs should consider a supplier’s ability to react to un-forecast market demand as a primary source selection criterion.”
To read Paul Ericksen’s IndustryWeek contributions on supply chain management, click here.
The panel also features Benjamin Treuhaft, CEO of HELPFUL, a nonprofit founded at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to mitigate supply chain obstacles, and it will be moderated by Ryan Kelly, who hosts a series of videos for IMTS+, IMTS’ digital content platform.
In a statement, Kelly said the presentation will show IMTS conference attendees the benefits of working with U.S. suppliers who use lean methods. “The Smarter Sourcing Symposium will show OEMs, tier suppliers, contract manufacturers, and sourcing/purchasing agents how working with lean domestic suppliers makes a positive business impact and improves resiliency,” Kelly said.
The symposium is scheduled for Friday, September 16 at the IMTS’s show this fall in Chicago. The rest of the conference runs between September 12 to 17.
