An audience-interactive panel session featured a group of textiles and sewn products industry suppliers who shared their insights on reshoring and expectations going forward. Moderated by Rick Ludolph of Productive Solutions, the panel featured Frank Henderson of Henderson Sewing Machine Co.; Michael Meyerholtz of Milliken; Brad Mikes of Incentive Payroll Experts; and Matt Poovey of Champion Thread.

 

Ludolph opened the discussion by posing the question, “Is reshoring real?,” asked specifically to Henderson.

 

“I think it’s real,” he said. “Otherwise, Fortune 500 companies would not be spending millions of dollars on this. Nike just announced its Speedfactory in Atlanta, and Under Armour and New Balance have announced similar facilities. And many companies are looking at wearable electronics. Those products being developed all have to be made by someone, so we see that type of product moving into the U.S. So it is real – and it’s up to us to deliver and perform.”

 

The biggest problem with the made-in-America movement, he added, is about two generations of skilled personnel have been lost.

 

“It’s a real challenge in our industry to find people,” Henderson said. “What that yields is a lot more automation, robotics integration, other types of integration to reduce the skillset of the people or to enable a work cell or automated piece of equipment to produce products with little or no human intervention.”

 

To Henderson’s point, Poovey added, “we produce three times today than what we did 10 years ago in our factory with the same headcount. We invested heavily in automation. Those companies that make the cap ex investments can succeed here. It all depends on where you sit in the value chain. You have to do something that’s of value. If you’re a strict commodity player, you have to fit that value chain for somebody to do business with you in this country or this hemisphere.”

 

Ludolph then asked Poovey what stage he thinks we’re in as far as the reshoring process.

 

“I think it always ebbs and flows,” he said. “It depends on how strong the dollar is, what the state of retail is.”

 

Next, the moderator turned to the audience to ask, “In your view, is reshoring a) just getting going; b) somewhere in the middle; or c) is it nearing the end?” The audience seemed split on the first two options, with only one or two attendees thinking it has about run its course.

 

“I think that’s great because it tells us we have opportunity out there,” Ludolph said.

 

Automation and the lack of skilled operators seemed to prevalently underscore much of the discussion after that, regardless the question.

 

Meyerholtz later provided an example of how Millken has embraced automation to help offset the skills gap.

 

“In our weaving mill, we actually have an automated machine that does virtually all the work. We have weavers, but they’re really not weavers anymore. They’re technicians or mechanics who work on the machine and keep it going, but for the most part that machine is automated. So from start to finish, the only people who come in contact with the machine is the technician, even though we still call them weavers. We often take people on plant tours to showcase what we do and the question we get a lot is, ‘where are all the people?’ We have only 36 employees in our spinning plant.”

 

As a software provider that focuses on payroll, Mikes was asked what he’s seeing among U.S. manufacturers.

 

“I’ve seen some small niche sewing companies that have a younger owner who pay their people hourly because it’s too complex to pay any other way, on performance or anything else,” he said. “That might work for now, but I can’t see that working long term for these guys. I think as work comes back here, companies have to keep the costs as low as possible but they also have to keep people.”