Metagrobolize

Mad Deskillings

Hip-hop performers are sometimes said to have “mad skills,” and this is a good thing. I’m hearing about what might be called “mad deskilling.”

It is not a good thing.

More often in global outsourcing these days the rather artless (literally) words deskill and deskilling are being bandied about. The dictionary defines deskilling as “the elimination of the need for skilled labor in an industry, especially by the introduction of high technology.” It also refers to the downgrade of a job or occupation from a skilled to a semiskilled or unskilled position.

You can guess how I feel about this. I neither like nor agree with the assertion that jobs can be dumbed down to the point that they can be performed in a piecemeal manner. Performed more efficiently? Sure. But done without any design, master plan or measurement? Absolutely not.

Collaborative work is work done as part of a group. And that means there’s a shared goal or at least a common purpose. As with almost any group activity there is some element of social interaction to the work in addition to the task fulfillment. Trust comes into it. Read the rest of this entry »

Best Source strategies

There are Best Source lessons to be learnt by even the largest of companies.

Taken from Electronicsweekly.com

Electronics firm scraps its Chinese manufacturing site

Universal Instruments (UI) has scrapped its manufacturing operation in Shenzhen, China, based upon persistent quality complaints from customers of its precision instruments. The company has since turned the facility into an assembly centre to serve its global market.

The move comes as US companies begin voicing concerns about Chinese manufacturing. Unlike Mattel, the giant toy maker that recently recalled products made in China, UI did not outsource its manufacturing. But even under its own banner, UI ran into problems. Read the rest of this entry »

So Your Job is in the Outsourcing Cross Hairs

No question: If your job is “in scope” for an outsourcing endeavor, you will experience change, which can be disconcerting to say the least.

Knowing that knowledge often brings comfort, I thought it might be useful to share some of the tactics that companies use when trying to decide how/if to transfer employees to an outside service provider.

They frequently ask these questions or ones much like them:

• How would you describe the culture and demography of your organization? What’s your staff turnover rate?
• How will you handle the sensitivities and concerns of transitioned staff?
• How do you typically integrate and develop new employees?
• Describe the process you use to harmonize conditions between a client’s staff and your own in line with “generally comparable (contractual) terms and conditions.”

Transparency and providing people with as much lead-time as possible are key principles of well-designed sourcing programs, and the good news is that most companies genuinely are committed to ensuring consistent and fair treatment of employees in the event of outsourcing.

At the same time, most of the industry’s service providers are looking to add talent to their ranks.

Malaysia’s corporate governance improves

Malaysia’s corporate governance has shown great improvement and now complies with more than three-quarters of the IIF’s corporate governance guidelines, based on the latest Institute of International Finance (IIF) news report last week.

With the findings, Malaysia is now rated to be in the top quartile of emerging economies surveyed by the IIF in terms of corporate governance.

The IIF is the global association of financial services institutes with more than 360 members worldwide.

Maybank President and Chief Executive Officer, Datuk Amirsham A. Aziz, a member of the IIIF Board of Directors said in a statement that the report recognized Malaysia’s progress and positive actions that have been implemented in recent years, and also singled out the scope of efforts required to further improve the best practices particularly in the capital market regulatory framework. Read the rest of this entry »

Unemployment…what unemployment?

Many thanks to Kevin Meyer of the Evolving Excellence Blog once again for highlighting what would seem to be an anomaly contrary to popular perceptions in the US.

Despite the increase in alarmist media and populist rhetoric from would-be presidential candidates, about the harm that Outsourcing is doing to blue collar America, with increasing millions of unemployed, the figures are actually near record lows.

Economists believe that the US is near the “full employment” level, where the 4.5% rate is reflective of normal ongoing churn, the perpetually unemployable, and those who simply don’t want to be employed.

An area supposedly hardest hit by the ongoing quantum shift in Manufacturing such as Wisconsin is no different; rates are still just a percent or so above the national average. This means there’s considerable competition for workers among the manufacturers that have figured out how to thrive in a supposedly adverse environment. Read the rest of this entry »

Back to Basics

I’ve voiced my opinion on this blog a couple of times now about the relative immaturity of China’s manufacturing industry, and I didn’t want to be seen to be ‘China Bashing’ however with the recent massive product recall of approx 18 MILLION toys by the worlds largest toy maker, Mattel, I’m compelled to revisit this subject.

We are getting almost daily reports now of Chinese products being recalled for health or quality reasons, and my take on the situation is this:

1. Due to the media attention that has been drawn to the recent ‘problems’ caused by Chinese imports, there is a ‘heightened’ state of alert with consumers closely examining where their purchases were made, resulting in outsourcing companies increasing their QA/QC procedures aware of the catastrophic consequences should ‘their’ products be found to be faulty at best, and hazardous at worst. Read the rest of this entry »

Top 10 Reasons to Outsource

1. Accelerate Reengineering Benefits
Reengineering aims for dramatic improvements in critical measure of performance such as cost, quality, service and speed. But the need o increase efficiency can come into direct conflict with the need to invest in core business. As non-core internal functions are continually put on the back burner, systems become less efficient and less productive. By outsourcing a non-core function to a world-class provider, the organization can begin to see the benefits of reengineering.

2. Access to World Class Capabilities
World-class providers make extensive investments in technology, methodologies, and people. They gain expertise by working with many clients facing similar challenges. This combination of specialization and expertise gives customers a competitive advantage and helps them avoid the cost of chasing technology and training. In addition, there are better career opportunities for personnel who transition to be outsourcing provider. Read the rest of this entry »

Malaysia Electrical and Electronics sector attracts RM16.6billion in investments (USD$4.88 Billion)

Malaysia continues to draw substantial investments into the electrical and electronics sector, approving some RM16.6 billion (USD$4.88 Billion) in the last 12 months with foreign direct investments (FDI) contributing 91.6 % of the total, the Malaysia Minister of International Trade and Industry, Datuk Seri Rafidah Aziz said, at the opening of the KL International AV Sho qw 2007 in Kuala Lumpur.

Some 41,023 employment opportunities were also created through these investments.

Approval statistics for the period June 2006 to June 2007 in the consumer electronics sub sector, show a marked trend for companies in this sector to move into higher value-added products such as digital audio video equipment, multimedia speakers, set top boxes and Thin Film Transistor/Plasma TV sets, and home theater systems instead of products like video cassette recorders, television and speaker boxes. Read the rest of this entry »

Cowboys and Indians

American media sources cry FOUL as Indian firms begin increasing IT employment in the US.
Just as the US media machine started getting up a head of steam against those pesky highly skilled and highly educated Indians who are working for a bowl of rice per week and stealing all of the American IT workers jobs, they go and start employing Americans IT workers…in America.

The New Jersey based infrastructure firm Infocrossing has been purchased by Wipro for $600m. Wipro is one of the ‘big three’ technology firms in India employing some 72,000 engineers. Infocrossing manages technical infrastructure and has five data centres in the US, providing services to such esteemed clients as the Reader’s Digest group, so you can’t get any more Americana than that. Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t believe all that you think

I’ve been banging on recently about the fact that the outsourcing of services jobs to offshore economies has attracted a lot of adverse media attention, however despite the interest this media coverage has generated in an industrialized country such as Australia, there are no official statistics that specifically measure this phenomenon.

OECD research has identified trade and employment statistics which can be used as a proxy for the impact of offshore outsourcing in developed economies such as Australia and concluded that these alarmist articles about massive job losses through outsourcing to overseas companies do not seem to be substantiated by an analysis of the data.

Whilst there has been some decline in employment in some occupations, other occupations have seen substantial increases. OECD research was unable to ascertain if the declines in employment in some occupations were due to offshore outsourcing or other factors.

OECD concluded that the Australian trade data would suggest that Australia is a major beneficiary of the offshore outsourcing activities of other countries. Read the rest of this entry »