Under constant pressure to slash costs, maximize throughput, and ensure premium quality, manufacturing companies are increasingly exploring outsourcing as a mechanism to drive rapid improvement and achieve best-in-class performance. This includes targeting core processes - ranging from specialized production (e.g., biopharmaceutical manufacturing, specifically engineered subcomponents) to differentiated customer support (e.g., white-glove service, 4-hour delivery window) to support for highly customized systems and applications - many of which have historically been dismissed as viable outsourcing candidates.

Outsourcing success is generally more achievable when limited to repeatable, transactional, low-complexity tasks, so some may assume that deciding to outsource judgment-based activities, critical processes, and even key differentiators ("specialized services") will certainly result in failure.  However, this is not necessarily the case.

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