FAQs

Discover the Keys to Competitive Manufacturing: Global Success in the 21st Century

Q: Is this just another “Global Trade” or “China” seminar?
A: Not at all. This is an intensive training program for strategic executives and business owners, with case studies presented by your peers from the successful companies themselves. It’s not an academic or theoretical exercise. And China is just one country we’ll cover, while the series spans all the major trading regions of globe.

Q: We’re a small company. How can we even consider going global?
A: This program is designed primarily for tooling and manufacturing companies with revenues of $5-$50MM, with most of the case studies in the $5-$20MM range. Also, the objective is to train you to design a successful global strategy, not to get you to export, outsource or apply any specific approach. Your individual result may be that your company stays right at home. But, considering that according to the U.S. Department of commerce 65% of U.S. exporters have 20 or fewer employees, virtually any size company can go global. Most will need to if they’re going to survive and thrive.

Q: Why five seminars?
A: We started out with no set limit on the time. We designed the series around the information we needed to deliver so that our attendees can go back to the office and design their own successful global strategies. It turned out to be five intensive half-day sessions of global business training.

Q: What if I can’t attend all five seminars?
A: You can send someone in your place. You can also purchase tickets to the individual seminars, but considering that the series is designed as a training course where attendees build knowledge as they progress and graduate from the series, we urge you to attend all five.

Q: I’m busy trying to keep my company in business. Why should I make time for this?
A: This is your chance to look inside companies that are successfully competing in the same challenging manufacturing environment that you are. If your company is struggling, you can’t afford not to attend, and if your company is successful, you’re very likely to learn new ideas from these successful company case studies.

Q: Doesn’t everyone already know that all manufacturing is leaving the U.S., and that U.S. based manufacturers can’t compete globally?
A: This is an unfortunate and utterly false misconception that many Americans have. The U.S. is the largest exporter on the world, with $694B in exports in 2002 (Source: WTO). Compare this with $612B for Germany, $416B for Japan and $326B for China during the same period, and you’ll see that this is a myth. And although they don’t make the headlines like all the bad news does, foreign companies (including Chinese and Japanese companies) continue to open factories in the U.S. to serve our vast market and even export. We’ve lost a lot of ground in the last few years, but we’re not out of the manufacturing business yet and we need to adapt our business models to stabilize and grow the sector into the future.