The Scramble

Offshoring is when a company moves all or some of their factories to other countries with a much lower labor cost. Many companies have had to do this to keep up with their fields of work. It is becoming almost a standard of any business to offshore at least part of your labor focus, business must adapt or die, this is a changed world. There are many countries in the continent of Asia that offer business the chances at low cost high quality work. America must learn to live with the fact we have lost a lot of power when it comes to keeping factories in the USA. We cannot compete with low the cost of taxes and labor cost. But we must find a way to use what we have been given, and Asia has given us a way to cut cost and apply it in other areas. The big difference between offshoring and outsourcing is that offshoring moves all production of a factory from a place like America to a much lower cost of labor country to some place mainly in Asia. Outsourcing only moves limited function to other countries with lower cost of labor. It is hard to think that to keep up with this flat world we must lose jobs to gain some, but that is just the nature of the beast. Low skilled jobs are going to always have good chances to be offshored or outsourced, our country really needs to promote education during k-12. I was talking with my sister who is an 8^th grade teacher, I told her that our k-12 schools should really capitalize on India’s low cost of tutoring for students that are stunning. I feel if we could do this it would be a great way to use this changing and ever flatting world.

A supply chain is when a company and the manufactures work in unison to provide goods. The steps that lead to it are something like this delivery, sorting, packing, distribution, buying, manufacturing, redoing. I have worked in a distribution center for seven years so I feel I have a good understanding of almost every part besides the manufacturing aspect. I can tell personally it is things like food and water that will always follow this chain because of the never ending demand for them. Many companies use outsources distribution to spread their product to a much larger amount of stores. Companies like Wal-Mart have many distribution centers of their own in almost every state. Wal-Mart uses their supply chain to their advantage by being able to buy goods in volume directly from the manufacturers. They also save money by using their distribution centers and not having to pay a third party. Wal-Mart has also opened its sales inventory database to suppliers to help make the chain even faster.

Google has changed the landscape of businesses and advertised, you now can type in what you are looking for and you will find results. The businesses ads would show after searching for specific topics, and then Google could charge the businesses for how many times it clicked on the ad. Google has changed how companies go about the level of work of people by being able to use google to look up reviews on them. It also has made ads more geared to the people that would be searching for that subject. This more direct advertisement approach has helped reach people that the ads were meant for. Before this direct advertisement approach, ads were just put out in the hope that the target audiences would see China has changed the way the world looks at manufacturing costs, it is now a must to use offshoring or outsourcing. Wal-Mart and China have shaped how the world is going to look in the foreseeable future with their push of low cost everything.

 The 10^th flatteners really just made all of the others just become even more overpowering. I feel that with the addition of the 10th flattener it is becoming easier to be able to use all of the previous flatteners to make the world so much more interconnecting and leveled the playing field completely. UPS does so much more then I would have guessed, I can’t believe they have their hand in everything. I found this week’s reading of “The World Is Flat’ by Thomas Friedman to just be a real eye opener of how fast the world changed because of the elements of outsourcing and insourcing. Also how China simultaneously has become Americas worst and best nightmare.

Mindless

Workflow software has helped to set standards and protocols, so that we can communicate and interconnect with aspects of the communication chain. One of the best examples I can think of is companies that you can buy textbooks from. You search the website for a certain book, the website will sale the book to you. Your order is sent to a billing, billing then sends the order to shipping. Shipping then sends a conformation that your book has been sent. The use of workflow software makes this happen with no hiccups. There is a chain of commands that happens so fast because of the advances in workflow software. Almost everything that happens is automated from your confirmation email, billing and sending your order as soon as you place it to being packaged and sent. Without workflow software this would be a much more tedious task. But thanks to workflow software companies now can outsource to other countries and still have just as much control of the outcome of their product as if it were in the next store to them. The more we can advance in the workflow software the easier it will be to automate even more than we can now. Or we can access cheaper talent in other countries and work hand and hand as if they were in the same room, so the boss can be a world away and still have the control.

Open source software is the collaboration of the minds of software junkies to make software for everyone to use for free. The concept of open source software is truly noble to help make it easy for everyone to use software for free. But that being said it is sad to say but if there is a nice way to make money someone will exploit. This is true when it comes to open source software, many companies will try to see how they can build off of the original idea to make money just like IBM did to Apache. I think that many companies were happy to see that OpenOffice.org was able to compete with Microsoft Office, but I would have to agree with the fact that Microsoft Office is the standard and I don’t see that changing.  One of things that open source software has brought is Linux and Firefox which has given so many people an opportunity to use the internet. I also like that open source software makes the big companies try harder to keep our business completion breeds innovation.

 Outsourcing is being able to move jobs to somewhere that you can spend half of what you would previously and still find talent for the job that compares or exceeds the previous employees. Many companies have moved aspects of their work load to places like India and China. The work you can find in places like those can be faster and cheaper. India has capitalized on opportunities given to them by fiber optic cables explosion throughout the world, and the dot com busted.  Also they gained the trust of the U.S. companies during the Y2k scare, this let them show the world they can do the job fast and cheap with positive results. It is funny to think that our country actually played a big part in how the world became flat. We at one time exploited India’s unstable economy by head hunting their best and brightest to help grow technology. Now they are capitalizing on the fact their best and brightest want to say, and they have made relationships to be able to set the future for their country.

I feel that computers and software have just grown at such a fast rate globally, as a result of supply and demand. For me personally, I have never really put much thought into the early stages of computer and software. But after reading more this week in ‘The World Is Flat’ I found it almost mind blowing to think of how restricting software was less than 20 years ago. Only because when I began using computers when there was standards and much better software thanks to workflow and open source software. I also was very enlightened on how the country of India did not steal jobs, but rather capitalize on the opportunities they were given. When you think about it they are only emulating the American hunger for a better life.

mind bending

I found the book ‘The World Is Flat’ to be very compelling so far. The way I have looked at the book as of now is almost like a future text book of our world history, for many reasons it just shows how our lives have been shaped by the uses and advancement of technology. The technological revolution will be talked about through history as this is when our lives became much easier through growing reliability of technology. I have gained a new found appreciation for the monumental changes that have happened during the last 20 to 30 years. It’s sad to say that I did not learn more about this through my time in k-12.

The use of off-shoring jobs to call centers has always has been explained to me as a bad thing. That being said I have to say I’m happy to hear that the people of India have been able to use it to help them to achieve a better quality of life. The use of off-shoring these jobs have helped to open up new opportunities for those that are state side. Our world is always changing and we cannot be so ignorant to not change with it, this may be easier for me to say being that I’m more of a glass half full person. Our country is always going to evolve and adapt to what is happening in our ability to provide jobs, but so should the people so they do not become overwhelmed by the lack of skills.

Globalization 1.0 shrank the world from a size large to medium. Some of the things that characterized this period were by power and the country stature at the time. This was also the first time that the world started to connect in some form or another. After this happened the question was how our country stacks up against the other powers of the world when it comes to innovation and opportunity. This time period was a real gauge to countries to see what the innovation of technology such as wind power, horsepower and steam power. To better put Globalization 1.0 in perspective, its a time period stated in 1492 until 1800.

Globalization 2.0 started in the 1800s to 2000s, in this time the world shrank from medium to a small. The key this time period was the introduction to multinational companies. This would forever change the world and the way we look at it. The cost of transportation dropped which in tune fueled the fire for this new movement. This time period has helped birth the global economy with the use of the World Wide Web, satellites and fiber-optic cable. The only thing that could slow the growth in 2.0 was the wars and the Great Depression.

Globalization 3.0 started in the 2000s and is still in progress, this time has again shrank the world from a size small to a size tiny and also flattened and leveled the playing field. This time period has empowered a new demographic of people. This has given people the power to be able to team up or compete against a new set of up and coming countries, such as India and China. Many people have been able to capitalize with these new opportunities. Some of the ways people have cashed in on are offshore jobs such as call centers.

 Globalization 1.0 and 2.0 is different than 3.0 in the fact that it is driven by mostly the U.S and Europe. The difference in Globalization 2.0 and 1.0 was that it was able to make companies be able to go globally unlike Globalization 1.0. Also the introduction to the industrial Revolution set the pace of what was to come in the future of Globalization 2.0. One of the biggest differences of the three periods was that 3.0 was the only one that truly leveled the playing field not just shrank it. To say that there is a difference in all 3 is an understatement, my understanding is that by the time we reached Globalization 3.0 people started to really have a voice in the outcome of what is to come. In 1.0 there was not one person that could make the changes to their lives like in 3.0. You now can work with people half a world away from the comfort of your home. In Globalization 2.0 the frame work was made to make business and life correspond from thousands of miles away.

Friedman felt the fall of the wall helped change the view that we can all work together in a globally economy. There was a change that occurred throughout the world by giving everyone the confidence to create a standard of how they could create a global economy. The wall falling had so many positive outcomes, one being the world shift to democracy and free market oriented governance. The wall symbolized a barrier in the idea of the word as a single market, so after the fall many countries could finally see the clarity and reason for a single market.

Netscape is one of the true pioneers in computer developmental software, they gave the world what it needed. That gave a more simplified search engine for people of all ages. The ability that Netscape gave the people was to be able to maximize the internet. Netscape came out with software to help implement an open standard. It made the use of computers and the web much easier to use. Without Netscape there is no guarantee we would be so heavily reliant on computers. They give us the ability for everyone to use a computer, for without them we could be left in a much different scenario then it is today.