I recently visited an EastBridge Engineering client that’s in the sensor business. They procure value-added materials in Russia, machined metal and plastic parts in China, cable and wire harnesses from Malaysia, inset molding services in the USA and PCBAs from Mexico. All of these items get married up into finished products within their own facilities in Brazil, Turkey and the USA and then shipped to customers around the world.

Their management team takes a pragmatic approach to developing vendors and sourcing materials and parts. They make it very clear to their staff and their vendors, “we’ll purchase from the vendors that provide us with the best combination of price, delivery, quality and overall service.”

This is truly an international business. Their CEO also stated “we are neutral, like Switzerland and will do business with good companies regardless of location, borders or native language,”

While most North American businesses have made the jump and are purchasing products from one or two offshore vendors/countries, this client has fully embraced internationalism.

How did they get there? It was really quite simple “we modeled our best competitors – we looked at their finished products and found that they weren’t shy about looking for top quality components from around the world. We also found that the competitors that had the most diversified supply chains also had the highest sales abroad.”

Now, this didn’t happen overnight. This company needed to develop well written and robust documentation. They also put key middle managers on airplanes to distant cities to meet the vendors, audit the factories and build human relationships with their professional counterparts. It took time, but our client now has a corps of vendors providing the highest quality and lowest priced goods to be found anywhere.

The takeaway here is that our most competitive and successful clients have broadened their supply chains and are procuring a diverse group of products where they craft the best deals. Is your business ready to make the jump? As a start, look for with furniture in Vietnam, apparel in Peru, medical devices in Thailand, formed metal in China and high-end tools in Taiwan.

Cheers,

Jack Daniels

jack.daniels@eb-intl.com

+1.617.285.2486