Elevating Competitiveness of ‘Made in Mexico’

Q: Considering the change in the North American commercial dynamic after USMCA, how important is the work done by IMNC?

A: IMNC was created after the signing of NAFTA amid the perception that Mexican products were in danger because the country lacked production standards and because we could not compete at the same level or at the same speed of our new commercial partners in terms of production. In this sense, the IMNC was created with the goal of introducing, translating and implementing these standards to the Mexican industry. Our mission is to elevate the competitiveness level of the Mexican industry, to take it where it needs to be.

Though the implementation of norms and the standardization of processes is a task for the government, in the 1990s the Ministry of Economy (SE) realized that it lacked the capabilities to carry out this task and named the IMNC to do this work. Still, the IMNC only deals with transversal norms, such as quality, environment, health and job safety. In addition to IMNC, the are nine normalization organizations; however, these other organizations are sector-focused and thus specialize in segments such as electronics, textile, construction and steel, among others.

Q: How does the Made in Mexico certification fit into the work done by IMNC?

A: Made in Mexico was a brand with more than 40 years of history. Its objective was to associate products made in Mexico with high quality and up to a point encourage national consumption. Nonetheless, it was only a brand. We started working on a norm for the use of the Made in Mexico seal in 2015 and it took us around two years to complete it and generate awareness regarding the requisites for its use. We wanted to create a norm that included everyone, and could be implemented on different types of products.

Until 2017, people asked to use the brand on any given product, the SE provided the right to use the brand, allowing producers to then use it freely in their products. Once the norm was published in 2017, we started providing these Made in Mexico certificates. The first certificate was given in 2017. Since the Made in Mexico was a free use of brand, we are waiting for the SE to publish a declaration of expiration that states that from a given date, all companies using the Made in Mexico brand have one or two years to certify themselves.

A lot of people have taken the initiative to certify their products. IMNC has already awarded 48 Made in Mexico certifications. Still, it is hard to know how many companies had been allowed to use the Made in Mexico brand. The SE has a registry of around 198,000 companies that were awarded the use of the brand; however, this number is tricky since some companies have changed their packaging several times and they had to request the use of the brand every time they changed the packaging, hence it is difficult to know exactly how many companies have the use of the brand.

Q: How does the Made in Mexico stamp add value to Mexican products?

A: The program of the certification was envisioned in the last two years of the Peña Nieto administration and there were high expectations for its success. The idea was to have supermarkets with aisles stocked only with products having the Made in Mexico stamp. Though the project has not been abandoned, there are states that decided to stop waiting for this to happen and decided to create their own brands. Such is the case of the state of Guanajuato and its GTO brand. Chihuahua and State of Mexico have taken similar steps.

The case of the GTO brand is interesting. When we started working with the Guanajuato government, they told us that the main problem they had was that OEMs needed to strengthen their supply chains with companies certified with ISO 9000; however, local companies did not have the certification. The government asked us to help companies achieve the certification, but when we reached out to these companies, we realized that even though they complied with the certification standards, they believed that obtaining the certification was unattainable.

What we realized in this process was that we were not listening to the market’s needs. We realized we needed to rethink the system of how we are implementing norms and certifications, even ISO.

Q: How does IMNC work to communicate and generate awareness regarding the importance of certification and normalization processes?

A: We have noticed that requests for ISO 9000 have declined in the last few years. In places where the norm is heavily rooted, they are starting to lose respect for it, and people complain that it is killing innovation and preventing companies from being agile. Our challenge today is people. Not so much the standard or the process itself. At IMNC, we believe that in the next three years, we will need to focus on the certification of people. We will need to work heavily with universities. In Mexico, there are over 4,500 private universities that are constantly graduating students. The problem is that these students are not being incorporated into the industry because they do not speak the same language or lack the abilities needed. Which is why we are starting with a new nom that will regulate quality at educational institutions. The idea is for these institutions to graduate students with the skills the industry needs.

The Mexican Institute for the Normalization and Certification (IMNC) has over 25 years of experience collaborating with organizations to strengthen and certify their processes