However, this approach does not actually implement standardization in the companies themselves, but rather in the outsourcing partners who must join the hunt for scaling effects if they want to survive. Companies have outsourced the standardization of parts as well as their quantities, a situation implied by the demand for price reductions. 

Prominent examples are components without distinguishing features which Daimler and BMW, for example, will in future officially be installing as identical parts. There are many other components which suppliers provide to the OEMs as almost identical parts. When looking at product benchmarks, OEMs point this out to suppliers and force them to negotiate lower prices. So the benefits which the suppliers have realized from the (unrequested) standardization are skimmed off by the OEMs.

However, the intensity of competition has increased to such an extent that today standardization must be pushed forward in the company itself so that learning effects to increase competence can be exploited. This creates yet another criterion for make or buy decisions.

Financial crisis confirms off-shoring as extension of deadlines for sustained cost reductions and acts as an incentive for insourcing

Off-shoring in particular causes high costs for the tied-up capital as a consequence of long transport times, which may be multiplied owing to defects. The usual practice of burdening the suppliers with these additional costs has merely shifted, but not eliminated, the costs. The same is true of quality costs: they have always been compensated by the wage level in low-wage countries, but they have not been eliminated. Quality costs mean a waste of resources in the form of raw materials and energy for which prices will continue to rise in the future.

Since capital will be more expensive in the long run, the pressure on off-shoring companies to carve out a position for themselves among competitors without capital injections from the parent companies or subsidies is increasing. This makes it possible to view the total cost of ownership without distortion, putting many off-shoring business plans through a stress test. Labor costs in the off-shore countries are rising, as are the demands on energy consumption in the value chain, which is why the geographic cohesion of the value chain will gain in significance.

In the current situation, there is a paradox that insourcing or suppliers in the geographic proximity make it possible to free up liquidity and reduce transport costs. Steps which do not generate value are removed from the supply chain, improving the value generation in the main plants with poor use of capacity at the time as well as the order to cash. The previous transport times and the related security stocks can be transformed into cash for the most part because supplier flexibility and security rise parallel to the geographic proximity. The quality costs in the supply chain also tend to decline due to the higher maturity level in the industrialized countries. In this respect, the financial crisis is a trigger to clear out misallocations resulting from subsidies and to conduct the discussion of the total cost of ownership more objectively.