Shelter Companies in Mexico provide Manufacturers with the Tools to Compete Globally

DCM Manufacturing produces fractional horsepower motors, centrifugal blowers, axial fans and plastic louvers at its Empalme, Sonora, Mexico plant, about $1 million a month in product. It does so under the auspices of The Offshore Group’s Shelter Plan.

DCM became interested in Mexico in 2008, and in 2009 decided to work with The Offshore Group, a manufacturing support, or “shelter,” services, to move into an existing plant that had been occupied previously by an injection-molding company. The move was to better serve large OEM clients that were starting to prefer North American suppliers with near-shore operations because of the longer lead times and ensuing complexities and costs of sourcing from far flung, Asian-based companies.

Joe Golla, Vice President of Strategic Planning & Global Sourcing for DCM, said the decision to go with the Mexico shelter model as opposed to opening a greenfield site had its basis in two reasons:

“We were a little concerned that with the scale of our operation we would add a great deal of overhead with human resources, payroll, safety, union negotiations—all of those things that are attendant to operating in Mexico,” Golla said. “That would have been a lot of overhead relative to our volume. We lacked the expertise in these areas, and we were impressed that The Offshore Group had that infrastructure in place. We decided we would ride that infrastructure—for a fee of course, but it was still less expensive than if we had done it ourselves.”

The other lure was the plant opening in The Offshore Group’s Bella Vista Industrial Park: “The space was already wired and plumbed for injection molding, and we took over an experienced management team and workforce. This was very important to us,” Golla said.

DCM’s Empalme, Sonora workforce flexes between 75 to 90 people, but the company is adding 15 to 30 people in the near future because of the relocation of some work now being done in China. Golla said production is running at only 50 percent of capacity, but that’s by design because the company expects more work from the Latin American market, which is growing and needs the types of HVAC components (transportation, construction and agricultural vehicles) that DCM supplies.

“We expect that capacity to be filled in short order because we are in a position to offer the larger customers and OEMs a completely non-dependent-on-Asia model,” Golla said. “In Latin America there’s a 20 percent duty on products from China, so we were able to immediately drop our costs by 20 percent by near-shoring.”

Those that think DCM’s near-shoring strategy is taking jobs away from U.S. workers would be surprised to learn that the opposite is true. With the emergence of a global economy, companies have had to build global operations. DCM’s near-shoring model is not in place to push down costs as low as possible—rather, it’s to respond to the needs of their global clients.

“Our model is not Mexico-dependent,” Golla said. “Our parent company has greatly expanded our manufacturing opportunities in Cleveland and elsewhere in the U.S. We have stocking facilities in the U.S., and our sales, engineering and other technical positions are in the United States. And we’re hiring in those areas.”

Steven A. Colantuoni is the director of corporate marketing for the Tucson, Arizona-based Offshore Group.Mexico Outsourcing Showcase , Mexico Customer Service Center

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