Celerant Manufacturing Executive Cites Biggest Opportunities/Challenges for Sector in 2009

LEXINGTON, Mass., Sept. 22, 2008 - Celerant's new Manufacturing vice president, Mitch Schrudder, sees manufacturing sector growth in 2009 stemming from several areas, specifically:

  -- continued market consolidation and acquisition activity,
  -- increased global competitiveness, and
  -- new in-shoring of critical professional talent.

Schrudder's 2009 predictions come from recent discussions with senior manufacturing executives as well as the findings of the survey on Change Management conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

The biggest challenges, according to Schrudder, are "the growing complexities related to virtually all parts of the global supply chain. Manufacturers continue to wrestle with the most productive and economical ways to address make/buy decisions, make out source/in source decisions, evaluate warehousing locations, get new products to market quickly, and ensure their logistics strategy is in place to support global success."

He adds, "The focus is once again on controlling overall costs. The past five years were focused on how best to deal with unpredictable rising costs of commodity materials. Since these appear to have settled down, cost reduction, revenue growth and driving predictable performance have become the new imperative."

Prior to joining Celerant, Schrudder was founder and president of Schrudder Performance Group, Inc. where he successfully advised leading manufacturing companies on their operational management and performance improvement strategies. Before that, he served as CEO of Perot Systems, Switzerland for 4 years and prior to that, Mr. Schrudder served 10 years working globally as Group President with Gemini Consulting where he worked with a large number of multi-national enterprises across the discrete manufacturing, automotive, energy and retail sectors.

Supporting Mr. Schrudder in this role is his long-time team partner and Celerant Business Development Associate, Tim Heird. Mr. Schrudder and Mr. Heird have spent nearly a decade together in the manufacturing community. Over the past two decades, Celerant has completed more than two hundred fifty (250) successful global consulting projects within the manufacturing sector.