Few in Mexico Have Training to Compete Globally The Yucatan Times
go to original June 9, 2014

Check out the story of “KidCo”, a Midwestern American manufacturer, which gave up trying to move production from China to Mexico last year.

“It’s a lot more convenient to fly to Mexico than to China,” said Ken Kaiser, the company’s owner. “But we just couldn’t find a way to get an advantage by moving. It took forever just to get a price quote.”

Dozens of interviews with executives, economists and American and Mexican officials over the past year show that what many companies are discovering is that there is not one Mexico, but many. Despite many signs of promise, Mexico is still a country of vast differences in efficiency and education, where only a small minority of the population has the training needed to compete with the world. Especially for the crowded middle of American manufacturing — the family-owned, medium-size businesses like KidC — Mexico disappoints as often as it satisfies.

Ed Juline, a manufacturing consultant in Guadalajara who came to Mexico in 2001 with IBM, has seen many companies both attracted and repelled. Like others who help American businesses in Mexico, he described last year as a tipping point. With studies showing Mexico rapidly reaching the same cost level as China for the production of certain products, dozens of companies came to him — including KidCo — looking for help to find a Mexican factory to contract with or buy.

Read the rest at The Yucatan Times

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