当你的合同制造商变成你的竞争对手[文献翻译].doc

毕业论文（设计）外文翻译 标题：When Your Contract Manufacturer Becomes Your Competitor 原文： Outsourcing the entire manufacturing of a product allows original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to reduce labor costs, free up capital, and improve worker productivity. OEMs can then concentrate on the things that most enhance a product’s value –RD, design, and marketing, for instance. Facilitating these gains are the contract manufacturer’s (CM) special strengths, which may include location in a low-wage land, economies of scale, manufacturing prowess, and exposure to the engineering and development processes of products it handles for other OEMs.(Such exposure puts the CM in a position to propose improvements to different clients’ products.) As IBM and other companies have learned, however, contract manufacturing is a two-edged sword. For one thing, a CM is privy to an OEM’s intellectual property (IP), which it can leak to other clients or arrogate. For another, an ambitious, upstart CM can claim for itself the very advantages it provides an OEM. Having manufactured an OEM’s product in its entirety, the CM may decide to build its own brand and forge its own relationships with retailers and distributors–including those of the OEM. When these things happen, the OEM may find itself facing not only more dangerous incumbents but also a competitor of a new kind: the once-underestimated CM. Adding insult to injury, if the OEM had not given its business to the traitorous contract manufacturer, the CM’s revenues and knowledge might have remained sufficiently meager to prevent it from entering its patron’s market. Although launching a brand would not be a trivial undertaking for any contract manufacturer, a brand identity rooted in the CM’s production prowess would have immediate credibility .Moreover, a CM working for several OEMs has experience making a wider range of products than do most of its clients, permitting it to concentrate on producing the most profitable ones. And its cost structu