Reshoring Manufacturing: Coming Home - Case Study Example

? Case A: Reshoring Manufacturing: Coming Home As a Chief Supply Chain Officer (CSCO) of a manufacturing company, there are different factors that can be presented to compel the board of directors in moving manufacturing back to Canada. Three reasons why manufacturing should be moved back to Canada include the following: rising transport costs for operating in China or other parts of Asia impact on business, high labour costs are now also being experienced in countries that formerly had low labour costs and labour costs are also falling in Canada since there are less powerful unions. As aptly illustrated by The Economist in the case of ET Water Systems’ it can be noted that transport costs are playing a big part in reshoring. For instance, rising shipping, rail and road costs impact negatively on companies that make goods with relatively low “value-density”, such as consumer goods since the transport costs to ship them will be high such that they cannot be offset by the revenue generated. There are quite a lot of logistical issues that are related to transportation of raw materials especially to China where they are manufactured into different products. These products ought to move back to Canada if they are for domestic consumption. The movement of these goods can be costly to the company and this is the reason why manufacturing of such goods ought to be moved to Canada. The second reason why manufacturing should be moved back to Canada is that high labour costs are also being experienced in Asian countries like China. The management as well as general employees are now demanding high salaries and this is no longer an advantage for a multinational company to move its operations to such places. This is costly to the company since it will not be in a position to operate viably against rising costs of labour. The Chinese are also looking for better paying jobs and this is the reason why manufacturing should be moved back to Canada in order to avoid such expenses. On the other hand, it can be seen that labour costs in Canada are in actual fact decreasing owing to the weakening of the US dollar. People in this country are no longer choosy as they find themselves working for even lower wages as a result of rising unemployment caused by the weakening of the dollar. This is an advantage to manufacturing companies if they move back to Canada since that can also be in a position to meet the labour costs. The other reason is that manufacturing technology is significantly improving such that most of the tasks in the manufacturing industries are now being performed by robots. This means that manufacturing is no longer labour intensive where there is need to employ a lot of people to perform different tasks related to production of various goods. This use of such technology helps to reduce the number of people who will be employed by the company to perform different tasks. Against this background, it can be noted that it will be a wise idea to move back manufacturing to Canada since there will be low costs in terms of labour. Case B: Hospitals turn to Internet to fight emergency room wait times B1. There are different reasons why there are long wait times in emergency departments compared to other departments in the hospital. In emergency departments, people in critical conditions are often attended to by the medical staff working in that department. Special care ought to be taken when attending to a patient in an emergency department. In most cases, specialised people like physicians who attend to critical cases are few compared to general nursing staff in other departments of the hospital. This entails that all the people who need to be attended to urgently should wait to be served after the physician has finished treating the other patients. The physicians ought to take their time to diagnose all the problems affecting the patient in a critical condition. The other reason is that this place should not be congested since it is designed to accommodate a certain number of people at any given time. The facilities used are also meant to accommodate a specific number of patients at any particular moment. This is the reason why wait time is likely to be longer at the emergency department. When other patients are being attended to, then the other people have to wait until those who came first have been saved. It can also be seen that there are relatively few health care workers in the emergency department compared to other departments in the hospital. It can also be observed that emergency departments ought to be regularly disinfected after a patient in a critical condition has been attended to. This also makes the wait period longer since people will have to wait outside until the place has been disinfected in the event that there have been several people being attended to. It can also be observed that the emergency department is a restricted area which means that movement of patients is regulated. Thus, the number of patients in critical condition determines the period likely to be taken by other people in the queue. B2. To a large extent, I do not agree that the internet can help reduce the long wait times in emergency departments. The main reason is that emergency departments deal with special cases unlike other departments in the hospital. As such, the internet can only be effective if it is used to schedule wait times in other ordinary departments that deal with ordinary cases that are not critical. It is pretty difficult to schedule treatment of a patient who is in a critical condition. Some cases require physicians to take more time on a patient compared to others so it may be difficult for them to schedule the wait period in the emergency department. Whilst the internet is an effective medium of communication, it may not significantly help to reduce wait periods in the emergency department. This can only be determined by the condition of the patient who is being attended to. There are certain measures that can be taken in order to deal with the problem of long waiting in emergency departments. Efforts should be made to ensure that there are workers on standby to deal with large numbers of people in critical condition. In a situation where there are many people in need of urgent attention, the responsible authorities should make sure that they beef up the number of the staff in the emergency departments so that they can be in a position to handle the cases. The number of healthcare employees in the emergency departments should also be increased so as to enable them to deal with all cases in a professional manner. Timely information about the conditions in the emergency department should be provided to the people so that they are aware of the situation obtaining on the ground. This can be done through the use of the public address system where the responsible authorities provide real time information about the situation obtaining on the ground than relying on automated computer messages. Works cited The Economist, Jan 19th 2013. Reshoring Manufacturing: Coming Home < http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21569570>. Tom Blackwell | 12/04/17, ‘Hospitals turn to Internet to fight emergency room wait times’ Read More