Outsourcing has meant sending work beyond borders, but in the next wave the word will mean sending work beyond humanity. It’s happening already, of course, and the fashion retailer Zara is just one example. From Amit Bagaria at India Times:

“At the other end of the spectrum is Zara, which has built its strategy around consumer trends, embracing the fast-changing tastes of its customers. Zara has developed a highly responsive supply chain that enables delivery of new fashions as soon as a trend emerges.

Zara comes up with 36,000 new designs every year, and it delivers new products as many as 2-6 times each week to its 1900+ stores around the world.  Store orders are delivered in 24-48 hours. It takes the company only 10-15 days to go from the design stage to the sales floor. How is Zara able to do this? By being fast and flexible.

Rather than subcontracting manufacturing to China, India or Bangladesh, Zara built 14 automated factories in its home country Spain, where robots work 24/7 cutting and dyeing fabrics and creating semi-finished products, which are then finished to suits, shirts, dresses and the like by about 350 finishing shops in Northwestern Spain and Portugal. 

Imagine the foresight robots don’t (yet) form a labour union and also don’t take the weekend off. Some American apparel companies are now partly following the Zara model, getting their longer-lead-time goods manufactured (semi-finished) in Asia and doing the finishing work in the US.”