The Reverse Supply Chain Comes Home

There's more to reshoring than simply moving a factory from Asia back to the U.S. Higher wages for Chinese factory workers, coupled with the headaches of maintaining long supply lines, are prompting manufacturers to relocate plants closer to markets in the western hemisphere. In some cases, that means a return to the U.S. But there's an important link in the supply chain that needs to come back as well: the ability to recycle, repair, refurbish or dispose of excess, obsolete and defective parts. The two main pieces of the reverse supply chain – post-industrial recovery and post-consumer recycling – must be situated close to the point of manufacture. Producers need to set up a locally based ''ecosystem'' of partners and resources to make it all work. On this episode, Linda Li, chief strategy officer with the Li Tong Group, returns to the podcast to talk about the challenges that technology and telecommunications companies face when they attempt to set up remanufacturing and recovery operations in the U.S. – not the least of which are far more stringent environmental regulations than in Asia. How can that hurdle be overcome?