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> Most people today can't comprehend the scale of American manufacturing as it still was at that time. This. During my seven years at the Windsor, CO Kodak pl

> Most people today can't comprehend the scale of American manufacturing as it still was at that time. This. During my seven years at the Windsor, CO Kodak plant (see my other comment below for more) it was crazy to hear of the heyday (I was there 2002-2009, not the heyday). It was the 2nd largest Kodak manufacturing center (bested only by Rochester) and built in the 60s. It was a sprawling campus of huge concrete buildings with almost no windows (great for film!). The campus had it's own fire department and power plant. It was a ghost of it's former self when I started but by the time I left entire buildings were vacant. At it's peak the plant had 3,200 employees. A lot of people there had worked in Rochester and from their stories I could hardly fathom the manufacturing operation there being so much larger than ours. Maybe that's part of the reason Kodak moved so slow - all those buildings and people and essentially small factory cities are not something you can change overnight.

djsumdog 10y ago
There are still big plants in the US. The Volkswagen plant in South East Tennessee (thought nowhere near the scale of the plant you mentioned). But they do exist in China. Plants in some cities dump sludge into wastelands the size of lakes. Some factories are small towns unto themselves where people work, sleep and live on company property. We still need to the scale Kodak had for their market at the time, but economics has moved it overseas and the market is totally different. It's still consumerism though, and a frightening scale. It's just abstracted away from most of the western world, so we don't see it.
- ethbro 10y ago
  Also notable that manufacturing at scale (including Kodak) has the side effect of leaving behind environmentally problematic Superfund sites. There's no way you're ever going to be able to compete with someone willing and able to externalize more costs than you.
- starky 10y ago
  It isn't that some factories have people work, sleep, and live there, that is the standard of how factories operate over there. Most workers are from outside of the area, so they provide all this for them in addition to pay that they send back to the family in other provinces. Even the engineers I've worked with at these companies often live in the dorms during the week, even though they may have apartments elsewhere.

djsumdog 10y ago

There are still big plants in the US. The Volkswagen plant in South East Tennessee (thought nowhere near the scale of the plant you mentioned). But they do exist in China. Plants in some cities dump sludge into wastelands the size of lakes. Some factories are small towns unto themselves where people work, sleep and live on company property. We still need to the scale Kodak had for their market at the time, but economics has moved it overseas and the market is totally different. It's still consumerism though, and a frightening scale. It's just abstracted away from most of the western world, so we don't see it.

ethbro 10y ago
Also notable that manufacturing at scale (including Kodak) has the side effect of leaving behind environmentally problematic Superfund sites. There's no way you're ever going to be able to compete with someone willing and able to externalize more costs than you.
starky 10y ago
It isn't that some factories have people work, sleep, and live there, that is the standard of how factories operate over there. Most workers are from outside of the area, so they provide all this for them in addition to pay that they send back to the family in other provinces. Even the engineers I've worked with at these companies often live in the dorms during the week, even though they may have apartments elsewhere.