Last week’s InForum for the Electronics Industry — formerly known as the Quarterly Forum for Electronics Industry Outsourcing and Supply Chain, which TFI started in 1999 – was well attended and full of insights. When a couple of long-time members independently asked me, “What are you up to these days?”, I updated them on TFI’s numerous international manufacturing, supply chain, and logistics research and consulting engagements, as well as our TFI Environment consulting practice.

Their polite surprise owed to their mistaken assumption that when I passed the Quarterly Forum onto Kathleen Geraghty and Douglas Kent’s capable hands, I had also passed along TFI’s consulting and research (not true – TFI divested only the Forum program). Though thankfully that erroneous assumption is not too widely spread – as evidenced by TFI’s thriving consulting and research this year – I would like to share with our readers some examples of TFI’s current consulting and research projects on operations/supply chain and manufacturing relationships:

• Customer Retention for Business Growth program, in which we are interviewing our clients’ corporate customers in Asia, North America, and Europe/Middle East. (Our international scope was bolstered by my working abroad in the past year.)
• Reliability benchmarking for networking equipment.
• Failure Modes, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) training.
• Manufacturing-overhead benchmarking for outsourcing networking/telecom equipment companies. (Let us interview you for this important study, which provides a complimentary summary for all qualified respondents; email AFeith@TechForecasters.com to see if your company qualifies and to schedule your interview.)
• Executive coaching for CEOs of electronics contract manufacturing companies, spanning corporate strategy, marketing, customer identification, and operations.
• Identifying and quantifying innovative markets for components and materials used in the electronics and other industries.

I am delighted to have recently added Pam Wiseman to our consulting team; she was VP Operations at one of our electronics-instrumentation clients for many years, and is proving to be an excellent leader on many of our projects.

It could be the increasing attention received by TFI Environment — an organization within TFI leading teams at OEM, EMS, and supplier companies to increase profits through competitive sustainability programs — played a part in confusing some folks about “what I’m up to.” It’s true that I am immensely enjoying the High-ROI Environmental Partnership program with a growing number of clients, backed by a talented team of TFI Environment consultants and analysts. But catch me on any day and I’ll espouse equal enthusiasm about all the ways we are supporting our clients – with operations/supply chain strategies and with profitable sustainability programs.

So, what have you been up to lately?