A Global Retreat !

There is now no country in the world that is not experiencing the Covid-19 virus Pandemic.  The passage of people around the globe is coming to a standstill as airlines cease flights and supply chains are interrupted.  It seems inevitable that there will be shortages because the world became obsessed with " globalization " and just about everything became composed of various parts from many countries.

As a result, high wage western countries lost their manufacturing dominance as jobs flowed to countries where the wage structure was much lower.   The various countries of " Asia " competed in a race to the bottom as the supply chain sought even lower prices to maintain a marketing edge.  We are used to cheaply priced goods and any disruption will quickly increase living costs.

A lot of car manufacturers tried their luck making cars in Australia and all failed.  We now do not have a car industry and as a result the world competes aggressively and we are enjoying very low prices for cars with the foremost engineering.  Never has the Australian car fleet been so modern and safety conscious.

Prices would be much lower but for an anomaly from the beginning of the car industry.  At that stage Britain was the leader of the world and they chose right hand drive.   The rest of the world chose the opposite, and today car manufacturers need to build in both modes to serve the world audience.  It is unlikely that right hand drive countries will change because of the confusion that would create.

The arrival of the self driving car is imminent, and then that driver position will become irrelevant, and that delivers an important message to Australian industry.  This interruption to the world manufacturing industry prevents an opportunity for the parts manufacturers who previously supplied Holden and Ford.  They mastered the high quality engineering that enabled them to make precision auto parts and now a whole new field of engineering is opening up with this supply chain interruption.

We were able to compete effectively on both price and quality in the very competitive car industry and there is no reason that success can not transfer to general engineering.  To avoid delivery delays, an Australian supplier has a distinct advantage over those Asian rivals.

Marketing is really having the right sales pitch to convince product manufacturers to see it that way !