No sooner did I ask about the next low cost country (LCC), than I stumbled onto the Gartner Group’s research on Outsourcing, which includes a list of the top 30 countries for offshore services.
Gartner publishes a lot of interesting business research, mostly on topics revolving around IT. Take any IT business topic which I have looked for information on in the past 5 years and Gartner has published a white paper on it. Content management, customer relationship management, SAP, enterprise software, you name it, Gartner covers it.  My only problem is, they also charge for it. I only hear about …read more

Wages have been increasing in a number of traditional Low Cost Country (LCC) locations.
Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics office, reports the following increases in industrial wages:

Czech Republic: 6.7%
Slovakia: 8.1%
Poland: 11.1%
Romania: 21.6%
Germany: 1.5%
France: 3%

Around Shanghai, China, wages in some industries are approaching European levels.  (Source: Automotive News Europe). My post yesterday discussed reasons for setting up global R&D operations; cost savings is no longer one of them.
So will the next Low Cost Country please step forward?
Some companies, like Renault, have plans to build manufacturing plants in Morocco and other Northern Africa countries. This could be the start of a good thing …read more

The US Dollar has fallen 40% against the Euro since 2001. Purchases made in the US are a bargain for anyone with Euros.
More and more European companies are setting up or expanding their US holdings to take advantage of the exchange rates. In effect, the US has become a “low-cost country” (LCC) for businesses based in Euro.
Bernd Matthes, president of BorgWarner Transmission Systems reports “The cost advantage in the US is at least one-third compared to Europe.”
Other examples from the automotive industry:

Alfa Romeo is looking for a location to produce vehicles in the US.
Ditto for Volkswagen
BMW will invest $750 million …read more