ABSTRACT
Onshoring—bringing work formerly sent to companies located abroad back to its country of origin to be performed in domestic operations—is increasingly common in the United States due to concerns about rising international labor and shipping costs as well as lost control over quality and responsiveness to customer demand. Companies ranging from multinational giants Apple and General Electric to smaller regional firms, such as Multicraft, an automotive parts manufacturer located in Pelahatchie, Mississippi, have onshored manufacturing activities once offshored to parts of the world known for low-cost production. As onshoring has spread among U.S. companies, managers have discovered the critical importance of improving employee productivity so that the effects of higher domestic labor costs are lessened by greater per-worker output. 1
