PI Engineering sells in 40 countries and sources a large part of its manufacturing from Taiwan. PI Engineering's CEO, Michael Hetherington, talks about the economic and cultural factors that play into his global strategy.
In this six minute segment (download iPod compatible, 33MB), Michael Hetherington, CEO of PI Engineering, discusses his globalization strategy. He sells to 40 countries and sources much of his manufacturing from Taiwan. Similarly to Bill Michels' recommendation for how to consider offshoring, Michael looks for best of breed manufacturers that provide quality product cost effectively.
While Michael travels to the Far East once or twice per year, he met his current manufacturing partner at a trade show in Las Vegas. Echoing Jimmy Hsiao's observation that offshoring involves a cultural component as well as the apparent economic components, Michael has a bi-cultural Chinese-American engineer on staff. However, Michael's experience is that his Taiwanese business partners communicate quite well on business matters. His engineer comes into play when there is a need to get across new engineering concepts and designs.