Jeff Wilke enjoyed great success at Amazon, rising quickly to the role of CEO of Amazon Consumer Worldwide, before deciding to exit that high profile role last November to pursue other interests.
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Wilke said "“When you think about a lean process where you take as much time out of the process as you can, producing things in Asia thousands of miles away is not lean."
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One of those passions is to help the US regain its former manufacturing strength, an interest in part created as he watched his home town of Pittsburgh, PA suffer from a steep decline in US manufacturing.
Wilke shared some of this thoughts on this in a recent interview with the dot.LA web site, highlights of which are gather below.
Wilke said that when he started at Amazon in 1999, he created a playbook for operational excellence, leveraging what had been built through lean manufacturing techniques in the auto industry and other sectors, saying Amazon applied it in retail for the first time – and very successfully so.
After Wilke left Amazon, he reconnected with a former classmate, Miles Arnone, co-founder of a company called Re:Building Manufacturing, a sort of investment firm that hopes to drive a US manufacturing renaissance. Wilke signed on to the company.
Wilke said that company “would ultimately build US factories and hire US workers,” but decided to start with some acquisitions of existing companies, but the goal over time is to build new operations. We're hoping with the right mix of technology, skilled people, long-term focus, the right leadership principles that the US can successfully compete in manufacturing once again.”
The trillion dollar question: can the US really be broadly competitive in manufacturing again?
Wilke says yes.
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“I think it can,” he told dot.LA, but adding “I don't think it's going to be able to do it by copying what happened in Asia over the last 30 years. We can't have factories filled with unskilled, low-paid workers.”
 The alternative: combine the the right hardware technologies alongside human workers who are higher skilled.
Add to that the need for speed, a desire across sectors, consumer and business.
“When you think about a lean process where you take as much time out of the process as you can, producing things in Asia thousands of miles away is not lean. Lean would be having production close to customers so processes can react faster,” Wilke noted.
Can that approach actually led to production of consumer electronics such as smart phones in the US?
“I don't think you could do that overnight,” Wilke said, adding that “I think that over time we'll build up the multiple tiers of suppliers that are necessary to build something like an iPhone and, maybe even one day, a version of that kind of complex consumer electronics product here in the US.”
The full interesting interview is available here: Why Amazon's Former Consumer Boss is Obsessed With Bringing Back US Manufacturing
What do you think of Wilke's thoughts on US manufacturing? Let us know your thoughts at the Feedback section below.
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