Outsourcing Manufacturing

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2004 in the subject Business economics - Supply, Production, Logistics, grade: 80% England, 1,3 (A), University of Greenwich (School of Engineering), language: English, abstract: Is Outsourcing manufacturing as the strategic solution to strengthen future competitiveness or just a modern trend? The aim of the project is to answer this and closely related questions with either economic or business content. The analysis begins with first generating an awareness of the nowadays employed outsourcing business and variances and the steadily surrounding decision making process. The advantages and disadvantages of outsourcing, outsourcing specifically manufacturing and the different sourcing strategies are shown and lead to further questions like the importance of virtual companies or the economic impact of outsourcing. As the outsourcing decision and amount is not universal but determined by very specific criteria a combined implementation way was chosen to finally reach the projects aims. Three industry case studies (automotive, electronics manufacturing and pharmaceutical production) were conducted to show contribution to the often unique processes and understand details influencing the decision. Furthermore an E-Mail survey was conducted assessing production managers' (again of various industries) opinions about outsourcing manufacturing and researching their companies' outsourcing degrees. Charts were extensively used to visualize the calculated data and the combination of both case studies and questionnaire finally led to the combined and entire evaluation of nowadays outsourcing business and its related swings and roundabouts. In this way the project could be brought to completion The self critical future work an problem sections mention further approached and solution possibilities for future project in the same field.