Last year Jeff Immelt, the boss of General Electric, declared that outsourcing was “mostly outdated as a business model”. GE’s venerable Appliance Park in Louisville, Kentucky, is opening a string of new assembly lines to build refrigerators, water heaters and washing machines, bringing home jobs from China and Mexico. President Barack Obama has trumpeted this wave of “insourcing”, while Hal Sirkin of the Boston Consulting Group foretells a US “manufacturing renaissance”. Even as the news from Washington reeks of heedless brinkmanship, the news from the people who actually make stuff sounds refreshingly hopeful.
通用电气(General Electric)首席执行官杰夫•伊梅尔特(Jeff Immelt)去年曾指出，外包“作为一种商业模式已基本过时”。通用电气位于肯塔基州路易斯维尔市(Louisville)的Appliance Park历史悠久，该园区即将新增数条生产电冰箱、热水器以及洗衣机的装配流水线，将以往外包至manbetx3.0 以及墨西哥等地的工作岗位回迁到美国本土。美国总统巴拉克•奥巴马(Barack Obama)对于这轮“回迁潮”大加赞赏，波士顿咨询集团(Boston Consulting Group)的哈尔•西尔金(Hal Sirkin)则预言美国将迎来“制造业复兴”。即便来自华盛顿的消息充满了不加节制的政治冒险气息，这条来自产品实际生产者的新闻也足以振奋人心。