But if your product is large, heavy, customised - or all three - manufacturing overseas is considerably less viable. It can even be risky - for both the supplier and his customers.

In their quest for the improved efficiency and cost control needed to remain competitive in this increasingly tough global economy, ever more manufacturers are turning their attention to what have become known as "lean" practices.

The cynics might say that the disciplines involved in going lean are no more or less than common sense. But the realists realise that common sense can only become a regular ritual throughout the workplace if it is packaged into a specific set of practices allayed to an ongoing process of identifying new ways to make the product even better (and quicker) and thereby keep the customer even happier.

Princess Yachts' operations director Chris Gates told me:

"We went to a firm specialising in lean consultancy and trained up our own dedicated in house team. At the same time, we invited our major suppliers to follow the same route because we wanted to show them why we had to go lean and how this could in turn benefit them."

In the process, said Gates, we even learnt how some supply problems were actually caused by the client. Over a period of time, around 20 of our suppliers have now gone through the lean learning process with the help of our specialist team.

"It's two-way traffic, " he told me. "When the right goods can be delivered to the right place at the right time, everyone benefits. When we can say 'we need that engine delivered on Monday onto that square painted on the floor beside that boat', everyone knows where he stands."

Gates said they want to take out waste - not squeeze people to death. "It's a long game and you need suppliers to be on your side."

And no - he has not demanded Fairlinesque extended credit terms. Every supplier I have spoken to says Princess is an excellent payer - proving that it aims to keep its side of the lean bargain.

And further proving customers don't have to screw their suppliers when it comes to credit terms to achieve a mutually beneficial relationship. Co-operation and fairness produce the best long-term results and benefit both sides.

In order to get it from the horse's mouth, I contacted a few major specialist suppliers of custom or semi-custom boat parts in the UK.

Multiplicity of windows OceanAir manufactures a range of blinds and flyscreens to fit a multiplicity of windows and hatches; Trend Marine Products manufacture the acres of windows and windscreens (often incorporating horrendously complex compound curves) that adorn many large boats; Halyard Marine produces custom exhaust and silencer systems and CJR Propulsion manufactures a wide range of propellers.

To cope with increased production, Fitzgerald traded up from a 5000 sq ft manufacturing plant in 2005 to a new 24,500 sq ft factory in Selsey. And in 2006 he bought US distributor Maritime Trading Company, which now operates as Oceanair Interiors.

Asked when did you consciously decide to adopt lean? Fitzgerald said he took the plunge two years ago at the initiative of Sunseeker's supply director Geoff Kemp.

In fact he was one of many who accepted this invitation and the process was part funded by a government grant.

Jeremy Usher said Trend also went lean at about the same time, after initial senior management training from the Engineering Employers' Federation (EEF).

"We now have a full time in house lean facilitator - formerly a production team leader - to train the lean project teams and to run the programmes, " he told me. "These have been hugely successful and a more effective, and cheaper, method than employing consultancy firms."

James Grazebrook of Halyard Marine gave the most pragmatic answer: "I decided to go lean in March 2005 when a senior manager went on long term sick leave and I took over direct management of his site."

But he did add that he subsequently went on the course run by Princess Yachts and then recruited three senior staff with lean experience in September 2005.

The answers to my next question - how has lean affected your production techniques? - began to show how the lean theory was being put into practice.

"It led to a complete remapping of each factory and production cell with a new production flow process, " said Usher. "There are no bench stocks - but consignment stocks managed by strategic suppliers".

Jobs are kitted in the stores, ensuring that all the parts are in the right place at the right time, thereby reducing interruptions to the production flow.

In addition, the production cells were redesigned and mapped out by the lean team - made up from a mix of workers in the area being leaned, buyers, and staff from sales and costing.

Changing the function "Our new lean team is changing the entire function of the company, " said Grazebrook.

"Production techniques, flow and batch building are just three examples. I could add costing, factory dress code, approach to tooling, performance measurement. It's not a list of changes to be made, it's a way of life."

When I then asked if lean meant holding lower (or higher) levels of stock, and how this affected cashflow, I was expecting the answer to reveal a less acceptable side of being a lean supplier.

Usher conceded that as more clients demanded lineside deliveries, so they had to hold more finished goods in stock.

But they aimed to offset this to a degree by consignment stocking (in other words don't deliver it until we want it) of high usage components from their own suppliers. And so lean spreads down the supply chain.

"As a result, " Usher says, "there is an added cost of stocking finished goods for lineside deliveries, but this is partially offset by there being less work in progress."

On this last point, Halyard is in agreement, saying it could "free up £100,000 in stock and WIP in 2006 alone".

Another route, as used by CJR, is to persuade a supplier to hold (and own) the stock and only call it off when it's needed. This might add slightly to the price charged, but plugs a big hole in the cashflow.

As CJR director Phil Silva puts it: "The biggest benefit to us is being able to secure supplies under consignment stock agreements for lots of our expensive raw materials and high volume consumable goods. Consignment stock means that we have it here but don't get invoiced for it until we use it. From a cashflow point of view this has been a major benefit for us."

The principal aim of lean, however, is to improve productivity and efficiency by reducing what are called the non value added activities. In crude terms, some of these amount to embedded "hanging around" activities - that achieve precisely nothing.

In lean terms, they are eferred to as The Seven Wastes (or deadly sins? ) - namely over production, waiting, transportation, stock, movement, unnecessary processing and reworking.

Usher says Trend had struggled for space with cramped work areas that had evolved over time, but as soon as the lean team mapped the key process activities and redesigned the manufacturing cells around improved process flows, cramped space was transformed into a clean uncluttered environment and the work rate improved significantly.

And by improving the supply chain, production disruptions were largely eradicated.

Less quantifiable Grazebrook has seen another less quantifiable result of the lean process - a change in attitude. "The sales teams are now the customers of production - as opposed to nuisances that make unreasonable demands. Another change is cleanliness - I'm now proud to show people around."

And what of the crucial equation - how has the ratio between workforce numbers and turnover been affected?

"Turnover has increased and our number of employees has not increased at the same rate, " said Usher.

Grazebrook says the same:

"We produce more with the same workforce." This in turn helps profitability.

"Major production customers today look for year on year cost reductions and employees look for year on year wage increases, " he told me.

"These mutually incompatible demands can only be met with efficiency increases. Lean is beginning to give us the ability to achieve both, and perhaps improve our own profitability."

Equally importantly, he added, it is helping us to identify product areas where we need to achieve price increases or decline the business.

And Fitzgerald says simply that he "produces more with less, " but then adds somewhat ruefully that rising labour and material costs, combined with competitive market pressures, are likely to balance out the financial gains made from the lean process.

Overall, Usher sees the lean approach as essential to improving any business. What's more, it's straightforward and follows a common sense approach. "However", he added, "it needs a trained facilitator to guide the project team and keep it focussed on the project deliverables. It also needs senior management support and appropriate time allocated to the projects."

The team and the workforce need to buy into the process and therefore training and communication are critical, Usher insists. The team members and workforce are the key players and it is they who will come up with the efficiency improvements if led through the redesign process.

The benefits are there for all to see - improved customer service, improved productivity and hence company security.

Grazebrook is equally insistent that lean is the way ahead. "We have to get lean to retain our place as a tier one chain member, " he said. "I suspect that companies who ignore lean, or ignore the need to constantly improve efficiency and productivity, will struggle in world markets - unless their product or skill is patented or truly unique."

In a sandwich "UK suppliers are in a sandwich between the rising cost of doing business and the inability to pass all these rises on to the major boatbuilders, " says Fitzgerald. As this pressure increases, he sees the surviving suppliers becoming fewer and bigger, because unless a supplier gets the order for large volumes of goods, he's got problems.

He reckons innovation and product enhancement to be as important as lean efficiency.

But what of the other side of the coin? What do these suppliers get from their big clients in return for falling into step with their lean marching orders? Big players such as Fairline and Sunseeker have already demanded extended credit terms or price reductions (although Princess Yachts has not).

So I asked these suppliers whether lean was conditional on selling at lower prices and on extended credit. Grazebrook enigmatically replied:

"How did you guess? The mix of payment terms and lower prices is always negotiable, but supply chain manufacturers these days are very much in the continuous price reduction game. These are generally engineering or manufacturing wins rather than simply dropping the price."

The discipline is a good one, says Grazebrook. For instance we audit customers' boats with them looking for improvements and simplifications. Before lean, there was no pressure on us to seek to improve ourselves in this way.

But he went on to add that no customer had ever insisted on more than net 30 days, although this might differ with really high value items such as engines. Usher said that Trend's payment terms were fixed in stone and they would not change them.

CJR's Silva puts it equally simply: "Payment terms with our customers haven't changed.

Sunseeker and Princess are good payers to us anyway - although I'm sure they recognise that they cannot expect us to match their lean initiative and increased demands if they don't pay us on time."

And do the manufacturers offer their suppliers more secure and long-term schedules of orders? Both Grazebrook and Usher said they had agreed to, or were working towards, threeyear deals.

As Grazebrook succinctly put it: "We'd want this as we're often investing in machinery and people, and most importantly training, and need a payback period for this."

"The two-way lean commitment between us and our customers has resulted in them providing us with forecasts and schedules of work which we had previously found difficult to extract from them, " said Silva.

"Lean has encouraged much more open lines of communication of this type of information. The forecast schedules help us plan and prepare for peaks and troughs".

Invest in new plant Any client who expects his suppliers to invest in new plant and forward order materials to satisfy his demands without a contracted order over a reasonable period of time is expecting to have his cake and eat it. Anyone with any sense will realize that for every quid there must be a quo.

Another serious risk run by lean suppliers is ending up with dead stock if the client decides to take a particular model out of production.

Again, Grazebrook summarises the situation correctly by saying: "In every case we have agreements which allow us to offer the customer a choice between taking delivery at full price, or scrapping with an invoice for an agreed proportion of the cost, at an agreed point after the call-off date has passed."

Prior to lean, he added, we got requests to take back unused systems - a real problem as they are all tailor made.

"The deal is that clients accept there is more stock in the supply chain to cover them, so we look at partnership agreements rather than anything else and if they drop a boat and there is excess specific stock, then this needs to be scrapped off and paid for, " Usher agreed.

Silva reckons the disciplines imposed by lean on supplier and client alike have already reduced the risk of dead stock, commenting: "There could be a problem in the past with us having to take a flier on what the customers may need.

Inevitably we would catch a cold on this occasionally - but now the risks of this are significantly reduced."

One thing is becoming clear:

lean is here to stay.

Grazebrook said: "In some ways our customers have done us huge favours by beating us into a lean philosophy.

Anything which strengthens the partnership and deepens the interaction of supplier and customer makes our position more secure, provided we deliver in terms of quality, technical objectives and efficiency."

And is there an alternative?

If so, what? Sadly for UK Plc, it could be a long-range flight to a distant land to locate a cheap factory and then train up an even cheaper labour force - thereby risking a drop in hands-on quality control, flexibility and long term customer satisfaction.

A concerted drive towards lean practices in the UK seems the better option - especially for the custom OEM market.