Suddenly instead of focusing on price competition American manufactures could ratchet up customer expectations and meet them, winning customer loyalty at a profitable price. In effect American industries that don't go after these process efficiencies are in effect handing their potential for profits to other nations; industry as competing on price is in effect competing to lose profitability over time. Instead American manufacturing must re-center on competing with aggressive intelligence and a focus and intensity to serve the customers they have more than any global competitor. To get to this level of performance against global competitors who are already focused on process efficiencies with customers at the center of them, American manufacturers must embrace lean manufacturing principles, processes and procedures to make their operations more efficient and profitable (Mann, 2009). This needs to get beyond using Six Sigma to simply re-architect specific processes; the focus must be strategic and on the overall quote-to-order, quote-to-cash and opportunity-to-cash process workflows that encompass a company's entire value chain. Only by attacking and owning the process efficiencies across their value chains can American companies hope to grow in global competitive strength. At the center of what American manufacturing can rely on to gain greater competitive strength is its significant base of expertise in knowledge not only in production techniques but also in supply chain...

In conjunction with these there needs to be a globalized strategy of manufacturing that chases expertise, not the lowest labor hour (Ferdows, 1997).
Conclusion

American manufacturing can regain its strength if it uses its depth of intelligence and expertise and quits playing the pricing game. Learning how to make supply chains collaborative (Dyer, Nobeoka, 2000) and streamlining the most critical revenue processes including new product development (Burkett, 2005) is key. Regaining its lead in manufacturing begins with aggressive intelligence.

References

Michael Burkett. (2005, July). The "Perfect" Product Launch. Supply Chain Management Review, 9(5), 12-13.

Patrick Crampton-Thomas. (2006, May). Enabling Profitable Growth Through Demand Driven Supply Networks. Supply Chain Europe, 15(2), 18-21.

Jeffrey H. Dyer & Kentaro Nobeoka. (2000). Creating and managing a high-performance knowledge-sharing network: The Toyota case. Strategic Management Journal: Special Issue: Strategic Networks, 21(3), 345-367.

Kasra Ferdows. (2006). Transfer of Changing Production Know-How. Production and Operations Management, 15(1), 1-9.

Ferdows, Kasra. (1997, March). Making the most of foreign factories. Harvard Business Review, 75(2), 73-88.

Mann, D.. (2009). The Missing Link:…