Issue link: https://jocdigital.uberflip.com/i/470620
90 THE JOURNAL OF COMMERCE www.joc.com MARCH 9.2015 3PL REPORT: TOP TECHNOLOGY PROVIDERS SPECIAL REPORT MORE THAN 200 companies, f rom Genera l Elect ric a nd Caterpilla r to Siemens a nd Toyota, have brought produc- tion they originally outsourced overseas back to America since 2010, increasing the number of U.S. manufacturing jobs by 650,000. In a recent survey by Bos- ton Consulting Group, another 24 percent of senior manufac- turing executives at companies with sales of at least $1 billion would consider reshoring in the near future, and 54 percent said reshoring is an option. This trend has coincided with a nother: The g radual emergence of cloud technology in the manufacturing sector. As manufacturers grapple with deciding about whether to move to the cloud, some execu- tives are wondering if such a move could make a difference in making accurate decisions about how much, if any, of their manufacturing should be brought back to the U.S. — or, in the case of Japanese and European companies, to their respective homelands. Although the manufactur- ing sector often suffers from a reputation of stodginess, man- ufacturing employees are more likely to use cloud-based appli- cations on their jobs than those in other industries, according to a recent study by SoftChoice, a company that helps IT depart- ments allocate and manage software applications for their employees. In that study, 67 percent of manufacturing employees reported using between one and fi ve cloud applications for work, a higher percentage than the RESHORING CLOUD Will U.S. manufacturers' growing reliance on cloud technology lead to clearer decision-making about their sourcing? IN THE By Alan M. Field