Recently I toured a John Deere production facility in Mannheim, Germany. John Deere is an excellent company – great brand, great products, good growth and profitability. They have used Lean Management techniques for years and have been able to reduce their hierarchy levels down to four (!). Production workers work in teams without supervisors and are directly responsible for improving their key metrics.
The tour was great. It started off at their new welcome center which houses a selection of their products (from small to very large), a bit of their history and a small shop. The facility was clean, full …read more

Wages have been increasing in a number of traditional Low Cost Country (LCC) locations.
Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics office, reports the following increases in industrial wages:

Czech Republic: 6.7%
Slovakia: 8.1%
Poland: 11.1%
Romania: 21.6%
Germany: 1.5%
France: 3%

Around Shanghai, China, wages in some industries are approaching European levels.  (Source: Automotive News Europe). My post yesterday discussed reasons for setting up global R&D operations; cost savings is no longer one of them.
So will the next Low Cost Country please step forward?
Some companies, like Renault, have plans to build manufacturing plants in Morocco and other Northern Africa countries. This could be the start of a good thing …read more