This site is the umbrella for my personal and professional life. It is updated intermittently. I am Tim Lovelock of Madison (Huntsville), AL, formerly Jacksonville, FL, Brooksville, FL, Tampa, FL, Orlando, FL, and a few other places when I was a child. I appear to do search engine optimization very well - if you are looking for the Tim Lovelock of Bain & Co. in Paris, his linkedin page is here.
Tim Lovelock
It’s all personal
I am a great believer in luck, and I find that the harder I work, the more I have of it.
~Thomas Jefferson
Feedback on the undervaluation of cycle times in offshore outsourcing decisions
I received the following feedback by email (tim AT timlovelock DOT net) on my opinion-post regarding the undervaluation of cycle times in offshore outsourcing decisions:
Good piece, as far as it goes.
Uh-oh… 
For instance, you might expand on the effect the long cycle time has on the ability of the manufacturer to implement “changes” or respond to a customer’s request for expedite or change that they want implemented.
and…
I don’t know how important it is to quote a 5% year over year labor reduction…perhaps a more general approximation of labor savings or even just mentioning that there are some short lived labor savings (labor being less than 10% of the cost of most products might also be mentioned). You make a good point about trading off labor savings for reduced ability to serve the customer might not be in a company’s best interests.
Also, developing a model to address the ideas in your last paragraph might be interesting…or…I imagine someone already has and, if so, it might be good to find out and possibly incorporate it into the argument.
That’s what you get when your father is a retired electronics manufacturing CEO with domestic (US) and global contract manufacturing experience. 
Key points from his feedback:
- Labor is less than 10% of product cost. If you had any production/operations management classes in college, you know this to be true. As products grow more complex and require more automated manufacturing tools, direct labor goes down even more, but indirect labor may go up as these tools require skilled engineers to set up and maintain the programs and equipment.
- The effects of increased cycle time on the ability to respond to customer changes: While many electronics manufacturers have an objective to reduce manufacturing batch sizes to the smallest quantity possible, intercontinental shipping of most products is more cost-efficient as batch size goes up. This means the entire supply chain is holding more inventory, especially more finished goods, so engineering changes can’t be incorporated, a direct “violation” of Lean principles.
- A model that incorporates the cost of cycle time in offshore outsourcing: It would be intriguing to develop this, but I have to believe one already exists. Can anyone point me in the right direction? If not, I might take a stab at this (with a little help… ahem…).
Anyone else have any thoughts?
I’m actually getting into this discussion a bit and doing some research (what can I say, I’m a geek when it comes to SCM and competitive advantage), so I’ll have a few more posts on this subject, I’m sure.
Tags: contract manufacturing, SCM, supply chainRelated posts
Cycle time is undervalued in offshore manufacturing decisions
Raul Pupo wrote an article over at EMSNow regarding the hidden costs of offshore outsourcing. He brings up many valid points: the increasing cost of logistics, increased cycle times, cultural barriers, and increasing wages in so-called low-cost geographies.
The item that appears to be least understood by OEMs, from my perspective, are increased cycle times. Unfortunately, current financial practices require only that inventories are measured while in the legal possession of the OEM. So, each company is optimizing around their local process. If OEMs considered throughput and turns for the entire supply chain, if there was a true partnership between these companies to optimize the entire supply chain, I believe the geographical solutions would be vastly different.
Ironically, many of these same companies tout their operations as being “Lean”. The increased cycle time associated with offshore manufacturing is the exact opposite of the Lean mantra. Unfortunately, the elements affecting decision-making go much deeper than the dollars-and-cents; there are cultural and compensation issues in play as well.
As long as OEM supply chain, finance, and program managers receive incentives to provide year-over-year labor savings, they will chase wages around the globe. OEMs chase low wages from the US, where they may do prototyping, to Mexico, to China, to India, to Russia. Each year, the product moves to a cheaper country, and the OEM manager receives a 5% labor reduction for each of the five years, but his supply chain and cycle time grows. However, the manager has achieved his objective: he reduced labor costs, and earned his bonus.
Unless enlighted managers “dollar-ize” the effect of the integrated cycle time - and there are hard- and soft-dollar impacts associated with going from one week to four weeks, or one month to three months - manufacturing will continue to be performed where wages are lowest. It is the challenge of the regional contract manufacturer to educate and inform the customer, and develop financial models to highlight the true bottom-line impact of offshore manufacturing. Global contract manufacturers provide geographic migration plans as a standard piece of their proposals. Regional contract manufacturers must not be afraid to aggressively present these models and make the case for domestic manufacturing.
Tags: contract manufacturing, EMS, supply chainRelated posts
Interesting site
5000 years of history in the Middle East in 90 seconds.
Click through the link above to see a great flash map of the history of the Middle East. I used to have it embedded here, but this has proved to be a very popular post and I kept exceeding my CPU quota. It’s a catch-22 - I want to provide popular content, but sometimes that popular content takes all of my sites down. Until I can afford dedicated hosting, I’ll do the best I can to provide you with the source of the great stuff I find.
Tags: websitesRelated posts
My Job Search
In the coming weeks (months?), I will be putting a significant portion of my time into my job search. When I joined this company, I hoped to leverage my current position into a more significant role. Unfortunately, the company is not growing at a rate that would make this likely at any point in the future.
So, I am currently UNDERemployed in a company with stagnant growth. In fact, I have little work to do during a typical day. I yearn for challenges that will allow me to showcase my management, analytical, and problem-solving abilities. I would love to stay in manufacturing, but I believe my talents work well in other industries and the challenge of proving my case would be most welcome.
My specific experience includes:
- Market Research, Analysis, & Communications for major electronics manufacturers in the Aerospace & Defense industry.
- Supply Chain Management, Materials Management, Inventory Analysis & Control, and Production Control for electronics manufacturers.
- Direct sales experience at the retail and consulting levels.
Please see my Resumes page for html and pdf versions of my resume. Any job leads would be appreciated.
Tags: aerospace, celestica, defense, inventory analysis, inventory control, job search, market communications, market research, Marketing, production control, resume, strategic marketing, strategy, supply chain, syprisRelated posts
Launching St. Johns Gifted Website
St. Johns Gifted was launched over the weekend. The site was designed to aggregate resources and information related to gifted education in St. Johns County, Florida.
The site was designed using the same template as was used on Hundred Day Head Start. The magazine style was selected for style purposes, as well as easy integration of RSS feeds from Yahoo! groups set up by parents at schools around the county. As each group makes their message traffic available by RSS, messages can be aggregated at this site so visitors can monitor messages across the entire St. Johns County School District.
It is expected that the site will serve to promote gifted education in St. Johns County, driving student/parent demand for gifted services and resource allocated to gifted services.
Tags: websitesRelated posts
BlogOrlando Follow-up
My BlogOrlando Trip Report is over at Bloggerista.
Tags: orlando, TravelRelated posts
See you at BlogOrlando!
I’m off to BlogOrlando right after work. If you’re planning to be there, keep an eye out for me.
Tags: orlando, TravelRelated posts
Hundred Day Head Start
The Hundred Day Head Start website was moved to a new host this week due to support issues at GoDaddy. I don’t claim to be a hosting guru so I need support regularly. Bluehost, my current host, has already done more for me in one month than GoDaddy did in a year and a half. Plus, the user interface is much easier to understand and manage.
Hundred Day Head Start is a website built to develop a community of people interested in diet and exercise. It is primarily geared to provide motivation and support, and is built using The Morning After theme for Wordpress, which has an online magazine-style look. The move and redesign is 80% complete, with just some back-end plugins to implement that will enhance the search engine results of the site.
Tags: websitesRelated posts
In Brooksville
Traveling to Brooksville this weekend to visit family and attend a BBQ with some friends.
Tags: brooksville, TravelRelated posts
BlogOrlando, September 28, 2007
I’ll be attending BlogOrlando on September 28, 2007. The conference is free, and contains the same content one could find at conferences in California and NYC for $1500 +. It’s supposed to be a low-key event, and I expect to come away with a better understanding of hyperlocal blogging, technical knowledge, business blogging, and network contacts.
Related posts
This section is where the designer expected me to write something profound. I think. But he buried it at the bottom. I question the value of this section. If you actually read this far, send me a note through the contact page, ok?
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