The Western Vote – A Crucial Read For Informed Citizens
- Aug 30, 2024
- 4 min read
Nigel Southway is based in Toronto, Canada, and is an independent business consultant and the author of Take Back Manufacturing: An Imperative for Western Economies, and Cycle Time Management: The Fast Track to Time-Based Productivity Improvement, an early LEAN thinking textbook.
This is a book that Western citizens should read before they vote in any future elections! We are in a period of significant democratic voting activity in the Western world, with the last year and the next three witnessing almost all Western national government directions being reset via citizen voting. Most of these nations have common issues that will be on the minds of those voters, with citizen prosperity and immigration at the top of the list, although geopolitical unrest, global trade, and climate change are not far below.
What's different about the vote this time
In the past, many voters decided how to vote based on past ideology or habit rather than a deep understanding of the policy platform choices, but this is changing due to a combination of improved education and information and a much higher attention span due to the severity of citizen dissatisfaction with how their nations are providing for them and their children. They are more open to a wider range of policy solutions and have a powerful will to see change and try something different from the past political ideology that the majority believe has taken their nation in the wrong direction.
In Take Back Manufacturing, An Imperative for Western Economies, we explain the causes for low prosperity and explain that in less than one lifetime, we have experienced the destruction of the manufacturing sectors in our Western societies and the significant loss of national prosperity and why the imperative for western economies must be to Take Back Manufacturing!
The book provides a justification and detailed guide for the reshoring of our Western industries. It has been written for all Western citizens, industry leaders, and their governments to understand that take-back manufacturing is imperative for Western economies to ensure future productivity and prosperity.
The author using many years of manufacturing and business experience, including working in Mexico and China and a decade of work with the TBM advocacy group, takes the reader through the history of manufacturing and explains in detail with a lot of facts, graphs, and diagrams how the globalized manufacturing approach, with its efficient supply chains supported by liberalized free-trade agreements, has been the business norm for the last four decades, and has been the prime reason for the hollowing out of the Western nations industrial base with the loss of national productivity and prosperity for its citizens.
In many Western economies, manufacturing has been neglected, with indifferent industrial policies, under-capitalization, and poor development funding. A significant trade imbalance has eradicated many jobs and small enterprises, with most of the production-capacity investment and technological development being relocated offshore to foreign factories. Not only have Western nations lost manufacturing capacity, but so has the infrastructure to support the capability for new product development.
However, recent reshoring business models are demonstrating that current and future supply chain total costs have reached the tipping point offering reshoring back to localized factories as a competitive advantage across most industrial sectors. And recently, the Covid supply chain disruption has sensitized everyone to the real and increasing cost, inherent waste, and instability of long supply chains. Also, recent geopolitics has underscored how the dependence on globalized trade will become an economic security risk for the Western world. This realization is now encouraging Western economies to move back to more localized trade blocs, and why, for most Western citizens, it's time to "Take Back Manufacturing” to gain back lost prosperity.
This book discusses all the political, social, economic, and technological factors that must be considered for Western nations to take back manufacturing, including the investment in education and technology, and how there will need to be a strong political review of social priorities, immigration strategy, and climate change action, as well as a clear national level recovery plan that will demand a strong political will and national leadership that has the ability to set mutual trade policies with other western nations to form strong localized trade blocs.
The book is not called “Welcome Back Manufacturing.” because, for most Western economies, manufacturing must be taken back with a focused and coordinated national-level TBM policy roadmap and must be embraced and followed by all involved: the political leadership, the industries, the education system, and society as a whole.
Nigel Southway, Take Back Manufacturing Author
Nigel Southway is based in Toronto, Canada, and is an independent business consultant and the author of Take Back Manufacturing: An Imperative for Western Economies, and Cycle Time Management: The Fast Track to Time-Based Productivity Improvement, an early LEAN thinking textbook.
He consults and educates worldwide on Business Productivity Improvement, LEAN business practices, Advanced Manufacturing Engineering, Future Supply Chain Management, Industry 4.0, National Sustainability, Global technology transfer projects and joint ventures and more.
He is a past chair of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers and the leading advocate and spokesperson for the Take Back Manufacturing Forum, and the North American Reshoring initiative in Canada.
