5 ms·

I think you've missed the point. It's not about American/Foreign but the implications of outsourcing things to less developed countries. My mom has a foundry h

by tzaman 11y ago

I think you've missed the point. It's not about American/Foreign but the implications of outsourcing things to less developed countries. My mom has a foundry here in Slovenia and at some point she decided to outsource production of some relatively easy stuff to China, because it seemed cheaper. Well, suffice it to say she stopped after the first batch arrived, in which only about 30% of products were up to standards, which are easy to track in die casting: a few precise measurements and an X-ray, all totalling 5 minutes of work. So the point is (usually): underdeveloped countries === cheaper and less educated labour + less oversight + lower quality. A recipe for disaster. But as long as profits go up it's not a big deal, right?

stickfigure 11y ago
I think you just illustrated the problem with the article - you've turned a personal anecdote into a fairly ugly stereotype. There are a lot of well educated, highly skilled, and generally underemployed people in El Salvador, Mexico, and - yes - China. I'll be concerned when I hear statistical evidence of higher failure rates from overseas shops. There are plenty of anecdotes of developed-country maintenance crews making serious mistakes - including one responsible for crashing a Concorde and killing everyone on board.
- omginternets 11y ago
  >you've turned a personal anecdote into a fairly ugly stereotype. You seem to be implying that this personal anecdote isn't representative of a larger trend, which is strange. It's certainly possible to do business with developing countries, but one has to be especially careful with regards to work quality. This is neither new or xenophobic. Claiming otherwise is absurd. With aviation and other life-and-death products, I find these concerns to be especially relevant. Moreover, I (respectfully!) contend that your comment is a prime example of political correctness pushed to a dangerous extreme. Just because it's a stereotype doesn't mean it isn't mostly true, unpalatable though that thought may be. It so happens that Chinese people eat a lot of rice, and Chinese manufacturers have a rich history of cutting costs by deceitfully degrading quality. These two statements are neither false nor bigoted.
  - jinst8gmi 11y ago
    > You seem to be implying that this personal anecdote isn't representative of a larger trend, which is strange. In what sense does a single data point represent a trend? > It's certainly possible to do business with developing countries, but one has to be especially careful with regards to work quality. You also need to be careful of work quality from developed countries. There is no shortage of examples of shoddy work being done in developed countries.
    - omginternets 11y ago
      >In what sense does a single data point represent a trend? It doesn't. It's the other way around: a single datapoint can be congruent or incongruent with an observed and measured trend. This is the case with the present example. >You also need to be careful of work quality from developed countries. You always have to be careful of craftsmanship, but to imply that there's no systematic variance as a function of national origin is disingenuous at best and insane at worst. Again, I'm positively flabbergasted by the extent to which people want to play with words and run in circles around such issues, especially given the extent to which these problems are documented. Has it really become that taboo to observe that certain countries have a poor track record, on the whole? Am I only allowed to criticize my home country, now?
      - jinst8gmi 11y ago
        There are many highly competent people and organisations in "developing" countries. It only makes sense to evaluate things on a case by case basis. Making blanket generalisations is not constructive as there are countless cases where naive generalisations and prejudices turn out to be false.
        omginternets 11y ago
        >There are many highly competent people and organisations in "developing" countries Yes, you're repeating yourself. > It only makes sense to evaluate things on a case by case basis. I disagree. Case-by-case evaluation is necessary, but general trends are highly informative, useful, and not intrinsically racist/xenophobe/bigoted. You're arguing that we should ignore evidence on the basis of political correctness, and I'm arguing that this is silly and dangerous.
- tolien 11y ago
  > I'll be concerned when I hear statistical evidence of higher failure rates from overseas shops. The issue seems to be getting that evidence, when the airlines have a strong disincentive not to report broken planes and the FAA finds it hard (for reasons of resources and the mechanics of travelling to a distant facility) to surprise-inspect facilities. That's not unique to offshored facilities, though.
  - sokoloff 11y ago
    There are very clear requirements for reporting certain in-flight failures, and very clear requirements for dispatching with some equipment inoperative. In addition, log books can be inspected by the FAA for patterns of failure, or for information after a specific failure. I think this is a complete non-issue for everyone except US-based Airframe & Powerplant mechanics. If you're worried about aviation safety, don't fly on regional carriers in Eastern Europe, South America, or any third-world country. Flying on any major (for flights operated by the major, not under a codeshare) is the safest form of long distance travel by quite a wide margin. On the small private planes that I fly, we have annual inspections where the airplane is carefully inspected and in order to do that, lots of disassembly and re-assembly is required. It's inherently dangerous, and I do an extremely careful pre-flight and will not take passengers on the first flight post-maintenance. I've found an oil line only finger tight (dumped oil directly onto the exhaust at any speed over 1700 RPM), various electrical and avionics anomalies, and other smaller mechanical issues. And in my case, this is all done by FAA-certified, English-speaking, hard-working, dedicated A&Ps right here in the good old USA. That you can find examples of maintenance errors from overseas repair shops is unsurprising; it's because you can find it from any repair shop.
lentil_soup 11y ago
Then again most high end electronic devices are produced there, no? So it doesn't really add up
the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
> My mom has a foundry here in Slovenia and at some point she decided to outsource production of some relatively easy stuff to China, because it seemed cheaper. Well, suffice it to say she stopped after the first batch arrived, in which only about 30% of products were up to standards, which are easy to track in die casting: a few precise measurements and an X-ray, all totalling 5 minutes of work. So your expectation is that you can do it cheaper elsewhere to the same level of quality? There is high quality manufacturing in China and many companies do that. You can't expect to the the level of quality you want sending some plans over to a remote country to a dumping price. For how good Chinese manufacturing can be just look at your apple computer.
- tzaman 11y ago
  > For how good Chinese manufacturing can be just look at your apple computer. The difference between Apple and FAA? Apple has nearly unlimited resources, so they can be present on site to make sure quality is top notch. FAA does not. Oversight makes all the difference.
  - the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
    First of all this discussion was about the mother of the person I replied to, not the FAA. Secondly this is not a question of money as it is a question of volume and communication. Manufacturing is not plane maintenance, it's about making a profit from margins. If you are willing to sacrifice a bit of your profit for a higher quality product and you have a large enough volume that producing in China even makes sense then you will be able to perform basic quality control. Any outsourcing only makes sense if you have a high volume of goods. I can have a better quality control producing something here locally than to outsource it to the other side of the pond, even if the country is technologically more advanced than my own just because I lose the ability to oversee the process. None of that is relevant to the FAA though. The FAA has a funding problem. It should play absolutely no role where planes are maintained. This is a general problem in the US where governmental oversight is traditionally badly funded. Even the IRS has not nearly enough employees for the job they do.
  - notahacker 11y ago
TeMPOraL 11y ago
> My mom has a foundry here in Slovenia and at some point she decided to outsource production of some relatively easy stuff to China, because it seemed cheaper. Herein lies the reason. Chinese factories will manufacture things with as much quality as you want, provided you pay accordingly. Pay for a good product, you'll get a good product. Pretty much all of electronics you use, including the most high-end devices, was made in China. Most of the Western "Chinese = crap" stereotype seems to be because of Western companies, which pay for low-quality manufacturing. Also, consider that this "less developed country" builds nuclear reactors, has a space program, and runs better metro lines than most of Europe. They somehow manage not to screw all of this up more than anyone else.
- theklub 11y ago
  Who China? They screw up all the time...
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    So does everyone else.
- noir_lord 11y ago
  > Also, consider that this "less developed country" builds nuclear reactors, has a space program, and runs better metro lines than most of Europe. They somehow manage not to screw all of this up more than anyone else. Not that I'm saying this is not true but you have to consider the sheer control of the media in China, would we hear about the screw-ups, you can cover just about anything up with that level of control.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    They might not hear about them locally, but we probably would - China's control of media seems to be aimed more inward. I think we generally know about all of their big screwups in civilian sector. Anyway, Western companies tend to also cover up as much as they can, and China is not North Korea. And they do have safety protocols.
pjc50 11y ago
The irony is that if you were to say in the US "I outsourced some work to Slovenia", they'd probably consider it "less developed". Cheaper is nearly always poorer quality wherever you go. China is certainly capable of extremely high quality work (iPhone!), it's just that they market on a low-cost basis instead.
ap3 11y ago
What about smartphones? Best quality smartphones are made in China. Along with most of our electronic products - how do you reconcile that with your mom's anecdote?

by tzaman 11y ago

stickfigure 11y ago

I think you just illustrated the problem with the article - you've turned a personal anecdote into a fairly ugly stereotype. There are a lot of well educated, highly skilled, and generally underemployed people in El Salvador, Mexico, and - yes - China. I'll be concerned when I hear statistical evidence of higher failure rates from overseas shops. There are plenty of anecdotes of developed-country maintenance crews making serious mistakes - including one responsible for crashing a Concorde and killing everyone on board.

omginternets 11y ago
>you've turned a personal anecdote into a fairly ugly stereotype. You seem to be implying that this personal anecdote isn't representative of a larger trend, which is strange. It's certainly possible to do business with developing countries, but one has to be especially careful with regards to work quality. This is neither new or xenophobic. Claiming otherwise is absurd. With aviation and other life-and-death products, I find these concerns to be especially relevant. Moreover, I (respectfully!) contend that your comment is a prime example of political correctness pushed to a dangerous extreme. Just because it's a stereotype doesn't mean it isn't mostly true, unpalatable though that thought may be. It so happens that Chinese people eat a lot of rice, and Chinese manufacturers have a rich history of cutting costs by deceitfully degrading quality. These two statements are neither false nor bigoted.
- jinst8gmi 11y ago
  > You seem to be implying that this personal anecdote isn't representative of a larger trend, which is strange. In what sense does a single data point represent a trend? > It's certainly possible to do business with developing countries, but one has to be especially careful with regards to work quality. You also need to be careful of work quality from developed countries. There is no shortage of examples of shoddy work being done in developed countries.
  - omginternets 11y ago
    >In what sense does a single data point represent a trend? It doesn't. It's the other way around: a single datapoint can be congruent or incongruent with an observed and measured trend. This is the case with the present example. >You also need to be careful of work quality from developed countries. You always have to be careful of craftsmanship, but to imply that there's no systematic variance as a function of national origin is disingenuous at best and insane at worst. Again, I'm positively flabbergasted by the extent to which people want to play with words and run in circles around such issues, especially given the extent to which these problems are documented. Has it really become that taboo to observe that certain countries have a poor track record, on the whole? Am I only allowed to criticize my home country, now?
    - jinst8gmi 11y ago
      There are many highly competent people and organisations in "developing" countries. It only makes sense to evaluate things on a case by case basis. Making blanket generalisations is not constructive as there are countless cases where naive generalisations and prejudices turn out to be false.
      - omginternets 11y ago
        >There are many highly competent people and organisations in "developing" countries Yes, you're repeating yourself. > It only makes sense to evaluate things on a case by case basis. I disagree. Case-by-case evaluation is necessary, but general trends are highly informative, useful, and not intrinsically racist/xenophobe/bigoted. You're arguing that we should ignore evidence on the basis of political correctness, and I'm arguing that this is silly and dangerous.
tolien 11y ago
> I'll be concerned when I hear statistical evidence of higher failure rates from overseas shops. The issue seems to be getting that evidence, when the airlines have a strong disincentive not to report broken planes and the FAA finds it hard (for reasons of resources and the mechanics of travelling to a distant facility) to surprise-inspect facilities. That's not unique to offshored facilities, though.
- sokoloff 11y ago
  There are very clear requirements for reporting certain in-flight failures, and very clear requirements for dispatching with some equipment inoperative. In addition, log books can be inspected by the FAA for patterns of failure, or for information after a specific failure. I think this is a complete non-issue for everyone except US-based Airframe & Powerplant mechanics. If you're worried about aviation safety, don't fly on regional carriers in Eastern Europe, South America, or any third-world country. Flying on any major (for flights operated by the major, not under a codeshare) is the safest form of long distance travel by quite a wide margin. On the small private planes that I fly, we have annual inspections where the airplane is carefully inspected and in order to do that, lots of disassembly and re-assembly is required. It's inherently dangerous, and I do an extremely careful pre-flight and will not take passengers on the first flight post-maintenance. I've found an oil line only finger tight (dumped oil directly onto the exhaust at any speed over 1700 RPM), various electrical and avionics anomalies, and other smaller mechanical issues. And in my case, this is all done by FAA-certified, English-speaking, hard-working, dedicated A&Ps right here in the good old USA. That you can find examples of maintenance errors from overseas repair shops is unsurprising; it's because you can find it from any repair shop.

lentil_soup 11y ago

Then again most high end electronic devices are produced there, no? So it doesn't really add up

the_mitsuhiko 11y ago

> My mom has a foundry here in Slovenia and at some point she decided to outsource production of some relatively easy stuff to China, because it seemed cheaper. Well, suffice it to say she stopped after the first batch arrived, in which only about 30% of products were up to standards, which are easy to track in die casting: a few precise measurements and an X-ray, all totalling 5 minutes of work. So your expectation is that you can do it cheaper elsewhere to the same level of quality? There is high quality manufacturing in China and many companies do that. You can't expect to the the level of quality you want sending some plans over to a remote country to a dumping price. For how good Chinese manufacturing can be just look at your apple computer.

tzaman 11y ago
> For how good Chinese manufacturing can be just look at your apple computer. The difference between Apple and FAA? Apple has nearly unlimited resources, so they can be present on site to make sure quality is top notch. FAA does not. Oversight makes all the difference.
- the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
  First of all this discussion was about the mother of the person I replied to, not the FAA. Secondly this is not a question of money as it is a question of volume and communication. Manufacturing is not plane maintenance, it's about making a profit from margins. If you are willing to sacrifice a bit of your profit for a higher quality product and you have a large enough volume that producing in China even makes sense then you will be able to perform basic quality control. Any outsourcing only makes sense if you have a high volume of goods. I can have a better quality control producing something here locally than to outsource it to the other side of the pond, even if the country is technologically more advanced than my own just because I lose the ability to oversee the process. None of that is relevant to the FAA though. The FAA has a funding problem. It should play absolutely no role where planes are maintained. This is a general problem in the US where governmental oversight is traditionally badly funded. Even the IRS has not nearly enough employees for the job they do.
- notahacker 11y ago

TeMPOraL 11y ago

> My mom has a foundry here in Slovenia and at some point she decided to outsource production of some relatively easy stuff to China, because it seemed cheaper. Herein lies the reason. Chinese factories will manufacture things with as much quality as you want, provided you pay accordingly. Pay for a good product, you'll get a good product. Pretty much all of electronics you use, including the most high-end devices, was made in China. Most of the Western "Chinese = crap" stereotype seems to be because of Western companies, which pay for low-quality manufacturing. Also, consider that this "less developed country" builds nuclear reactors, has a space program, and runs better metro lines than most of Europe. They somehow manage not to screw all of this up more than anyone else.

theklub 11y ago
Who China? They screw up all the time...
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  So does everyone else.
noir_lord 11y ago
> Also, consider that this "less developed country" builds nuclear reactors, has a space program, and runs better metro lines than most of Europe. They somehow manage not to screw all of this up more than anyone else. Not that I'm saying this is not true but you have to consider the sheer control of the media in China, would we hear about the screw-ups, you can cover just about anything up with that level of control.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  They might not hear about them locally, but we probably would - China's control of media seems to be aimed more inward. I think we generally know about all of their big screwups in civilian sector. Anyway, Western companies tend to also cover up as much as they can, and China is not North Korea. And they do have safety protocols.

pjc50 11y ago

The irony is that if you were to say in the US "I outsourced some work to Slovenia", they'd probably consider it "less developed". Cheaper is nearly always poorer quality wherever you go. China is certainly capable of extremely high quality work (iPhone!), it's just that they market on a low-cost basis instead.

ap3 11y ago

What about smartphones? Best quality smartphones are made in China. Along with most of our electronic products - how do you reconcile that with your mom's anecdote?