Responsiveness, the primary reason behind re-shoring manufacturing activities to the UK: an Indian industry perspective

Purpose: Due to today’s volatile business environment companies have started to establish a better understanding of the total risk/benefit-balance concerning manufacturing location decisions of their component supply. The focus is now much more on comprehensive and strategic supply chain issues rather than simply relying on piece part cost analysis. This has led to an emerging trend called re-shoring. The aim of this paper is to understand the primary motivation behind the re-shoring strategy in the UK and investigate the factors that influence this decision from Indian industries perspectives. Design/methodology/approach: The analysis of the paper is based on interviews conducted in the UK and India (State of Tamil Nadu) in various industries including automotive, industrial goods, textile, and marine. For this purpose an interview framework based on key enablers identified from the literature, being IT solutions, manufacturing equipment and human factors. This provided an assessment of the capability of the companies for being responsive to western demand. Findings: The findings indicate that re-shoring to the UK is the result of inadequacy in responsiveness and long production lead-times of the Indian suppliers. The outcome of this paper indicates that the top factors behind this inadequacy in responsiveness are logistics and transportation, electricity shortage, excessive paperwork and working attitude. Originality/value: This paper aims to fill the gap in the re-shoring literature by providing a clear picture behind the reason for re-shoring in the UK and identify the drivers behind this shortcoming in the component supply from India.