“I agree. International travel sounds exotic and a lot of fun, but no doubt it gets old fast, even for execs.”
I am a senior buyer in the auto industry, in fact I am employed by one of the OEM’s. I can tell you that the global nature of this industry is exhausting. There are times that I begin my day on conf calls at 6 am with Australia and then move around the globe until ending the day at 6 pm with conf calls to Mexico.
There is nothing we would like more than to have our supply base much more local. Not only would it be much more convenient to gather the team, but the reality is that the American worker is the BEST at problems resolution, productivity, etc. The others just don’t culturally understand anything but straight line instructions.
Sadly, as the government targets coal, the same alphabet agencies target all types of manufacturing.
Oh, golly, can I relate! I did not do actual “buying”, but one of my jobs after designing a part was to hunt down who would be the best supplier, get quotes, and work with them, right up to the actual purchase order for the parts. (Then I headed QC when the new parts came in, resolved problem, etc.)
We had a production line manager who thought I had an easy job. He wasn’t the one up @ 3 a.m. with a overseas vendor with marginal English, trying to get things “right”!
BTW, you are right about American workers, or at least most of them as of a decade or more ago: Sure, we had plenty of poor employees, but we also had lots of good and even some terrific employees. It used to irk me to no end when I was not allowed to create a modest program to teach our often interested employees a little more about our product. Sometimes I wondered if our CEO was afraid a lowly line worker might ask a question he had not thought of...