Taking the Out out of Outsourcing

This is kind of a cool white paper over at IW. While not news to some manufacturers, MPO (manufacturing process outsourcing) is the idea of taking some internal business procedure you do inside your own facility--like say, packing crates--and handing that off to another company. Of course, that company operates within your facility, where the crates are located.

This isn't something limited to manufacturing...it's like when you go to The Home Depot to get a lock reworked to fit your existing keyset, and the locksmith is actually a vendor contracting with the retailer since Home Depot doesn't really want to maintain a roster of locksmiths on its payroll. Why you would want to outsource crate packing is up to you, but suffice it to say there are situations in which you find it cheaper or more efficient to have someone else do an essential operation for you rather than maintain the skills in-house. If you want to know more, go ask an economics professor or the guy who wrote the article.