7 ms·

>the Chinese either had worse quality control or poorer skill, but they simply couldn't produce at the same level. ... The Chinese couldn't do it. It seems t

by jasode 10y ago

>the Chinese either had worse quality control or poorer skill, but they simply couldn't produce at the same level. ... The Chinese couldn't do it. It seems that China's workers can make Macbooks and iPhones with high precision and low tolerances according to Apple's specifications. Were the Molex molds more complicated than that? In other words, if those specific 15-20 Chinese workers failed, maybe choosing a different set of 20 Chinese employees (or partner manufacturer) would have given the quality desired?

eloff 10y ago
I think that stands to reason, unless the OP wants to argue it's an innate defect of the Chinese as a race - which, to be clear, I don't think anyone is arguing. In outsourcing situations where you replace a highly-skilled and highly-paid worker with a low paid one in another country, you often get predictably bad results. Is it a cultural difference? Is it because of the compensation? Or just the attitudes of the companies involved on both sides and the kind of people they hire? I think like any complex issue, there's no one answer, but that last point sounds particularly convincing.
- lettergram 10y ago
  I'm arguing that due to networking effects, having decades of tribal knowledge is worth the cost to keep it. Starting anew elsewhere, even with smart people can sometimes take decades to build that knowledge. Look at SF, every company competes in that market for software engineers because that's where the talent is. It's actually a concept explored by the book "The Talent Code", and even explains why so many people from puerto rico (by population) are so amazing at baseball. Everyone plays, everyone looks up to it, and everyone makes everyone else better.
  - upquark 10y ago
    This whole discussion is setting off my BS detectors (your comments specifically, dad with HS degree vs 'the Chinese', etc), and to be honest, the whole tribal knowledge thing may be much more wishful thinking than an actual true effect...
    - upquark 10y ago
      Do the esteemed downvoters care to substantiate their position with anything other than "my daddy said so" anecdotes?
  - wott 10y ago
    > Look at SF, every company competes in that market for software engineers because that's where the talent is. No, they bring the "talent" (God, I hate this word and what it carries) from everywhere across the country and abroad. They is no tesseract fuelled talent generator device hidden below SF.
    - deathhand 10y ago
      Not a generator per se but a lure. It is a cycle where one feeds the other. People made great things and they needed talent. Talent goes there to hopefully be great those who came before. Repeat ad nauseam.
- dv_dt 10y ago
  I think it reflects badly on management planning - that they did first order accounting and found savings, but missed second or higher order effects that affected the accounting in significant ways.
lettergram 10y ago
Don't know what to tell you. All I can say, is my dad recieved a hell of an offer to return (and so did his buddies). The people he trained all had PhD's from various universities around the globe and were supposedly excellent material science engineers. My dad had a high school education, but was trained/worked for decades in this particular field. The molds that make every component in a MacBook need to be better than those assembling them. The skill to plug in a keyboard or even run a machine to make a keyboard, is not the same as designing or creating the molds of the keyboard. Apple does all of that (to my knowledge) in the U.S. The reason is likely security of their IP and that they have a critical mass of skilled people here, able to out perform elsewhere. Also, it's easy to ship designs anywhere, not so much material goods.
- princetontiger 10y ago
  This is super interesting... apparently we have also the lost ability to find specialized welders for many naval vessels... starting salaries are around $300K for the right folks in the US. hell of an offer indeed
- bpizzi 10y ago
  Only plastic parts really needs a mold to be produced. Metallic parts are produced on machining machines where the real knownledge sits in the ISO programmer head. And plastic parts are more and more reserved for low end product, whereas high end products are all made of metal (think about a plane architecture being made of plastic instead of aluminium: this will not happen soon). So to be honest about your dad situation: from an industrial point of view I think the people outsourcing your dad's job in China were right: they did loose the know-how on keyboards molds and they do face a problem regarding keyboard quality nowadays, but that value gained in outsourcing low end parts was invested in machining technologies with very local jobs garanteed for a long industrial time. I'm sorry about your dad situation in that systemic change, and I'm glad he managed to move to another field, but what's at stake here is really what a was proposed in a parent comment: 'manual' labour being replaced with automation (and human tragedies involved unfortunately...).
  - tim333 10y ago
csomar 10y ago
I don't know the OP but I think his father is biased. The story is repeated a lot (The Chinese/Indians/Other-Race are cheaper but can't produce the same!) even for Software developers (Indians). In most cases (at least for the software engineering) the problem turns out that the other-race pay was low, and thus attracted low talent. The company probably wanted to cut costs and picked cheap foreign workers that didn't perform.
- Gracana 10y ago
  Tool and die making is the height of machining skill, it takes a very good machinist, the right machine, and the right environment. This story doesn't seem unreasonable.
  - taivare 10y ago
    Cleveland Oh. was the tool & die capitol of the world those jobs started to leave in the 80's and NAFTA and the Great Recession took the rest especially the small ones in Western Pa. As for Molex the Koch's bought them in 2013 but, I haven't followed where or what they have done with Molex. I have used Molex machines in production they were so well made. When I was a kid Cleveland made everything I remember the pride I felt seeing a dump truck the size of 2 houses ( Euc) roll out of the factory back then. It wasn't my fathers generation Silent (Korea) that sent those jobs out of the country it was the generation that followed them !
- fnordfnordfnord 10y ago
  That doesn't necessarily make the father biased/racist; but I think you're right about the economic incentives at play. Many of the problems I've encountered with Chinese manufacturing can be traced back to stateside managers/purchasers wanting to relentlessly drive the price down, yet still exert the same kind of QC effort (or less) than they did with their former in-house manufacturing. They (mgmt) failed to recognize a lot of informal QC that might otherwise be lumped in with "work-ethic." They also probably laid off the experienced QC and put a jr level engineer/recent grad "in charge", but with little/no authority to do anything. Meanwhile on the Chinese side, the workers work hard, usually with every effort focused on speed. I remember one specific case where an assembler kept ruining chassis because they wouldn't replace worn screwdrivers for the assemblers. They caused lots of rework simply because the Chinese shop manager was too tight to accept that screwdrivers are consumables. tl;dr Don't rush to blame the workers, they're usually just doing what they've been told to do.
vetinari 10y ago
It's not that a specific person, company or whatever failed. It is systematic - the Chinese or anyone else do not have market for high quality molds (or other tools). The end customers want cheap stuff, the manufacturers that make cheap stuff conversely do want cheap tools... turtles all the way down. That means that the molds/whatever are sitting somewhere in the middle, they have to be cheap too and there are corners being cut to make the target price with being good enough.
dv_dt 10y ago
I think the point is that to get the same quality, you have to look more deeply than just the wages of the given workers. Once you hit that quality, the those workers then step onto the same track of skilled wage growth.
JamesLeonis 10y ago
Consider the opportunity cost on the Chinese factory if they crossed Apple. Apple can take the hit and move to another source, leaving the entire factory out a major customer. Even then, counterfeit iPhones are everywhere in China [1][2]. Compare and contrast with the shenanigans Kickstarters have with contract renegging, stolen IP, and plain old fraud [3]. [1]: http://mashable.com/2016/06/17/apple-china-knockoffs/#j5NyhhG5TPq3 http://mashable.com/2016/06/17/apple-china-knockoffs/#j5Nyhh... [2]: http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-fake-chinese-apple-store-shenzen-kunming-2015-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-fake-chinese-apple-sto... [3]: https://qz.com/771727/chinas-factories-in-shenzhen-can-copy-products-at-breakneck-speed-and-its-time-for-the-rest-of-the-world-to-get-over-it/ https://qz.com/771727/chinas-factories-in-shenzhen-can-copy-...
lawpoop 10y ago
> Were the Molex molds more complicated than that? Probably not, and therefore the manufacturer was looking for rock-bottom prices, and thereby got what they paid for.
princeb 10y ago
> It seems that China workers can make Macbooks and iPhones with high precision and low tolerances thought I read it somewhere that china is literally the only country in the world right now that can do that at scale and change specs as rapidly as apple wants them to.
JabrZer0 10y ago
As far as my (admittedly limited) experience goes, I'd say you're right. I'm currently learning about the intricacies of manufacturing in China through a trial-by-fire of manufacturing some components for our company's first product overseas. We've been told time and time again by advisors, investors, and friends in the industry that it's less money but a whole lot more work. On the surface, you have to manage extra things like shipping and imports. Under the hood, quality control and partner selection are MUCH more in-depth and difficult processes. If you're not working with someone who already has relationships built, and/or if you're not willing to be very hands-on with the process, from what I've been told you're unlikely to get high-quality, low-cost parts. I can definitely imagine someone who is used to dealing with manufacturing in the US having a lot of issues adjusting to the way business is done in China if they didn't know what they were getting themselves into.
DashRattlesnake 10y ago
> It seems that China's workers can make Macbooks and iPhones with high precision and low tolerances according to Apple's specifications. Isn't Apple's high-precision manufacturing highly automated to a level of expense that no one else would try? IIRC, they have acres of automated CNC mills churning out MacBook cases. Apple's manufacturing operation is so unique that it's not generalizable.
- c3833174 10y ago
  Yes, the Japanese CNC machine manufacturers Apple uses have entire factories dedicated to Apple-bound products. Source: http://atomicdelights.com/blog/why-your-next-iphone-wont-be-ceramic http://atomicdelights.com/blog/why-your-next-iphone-wont-be-...
Spooky23 10y ago
Sure. That capability was built and scaled from the iPod up. Foxconn didn't start building millions of iPhones. They started with thousands of other products. Same thing happened with Dell. They financed factories for Asus to build laptops and walked away from nearly new plants in the US not long ago for mostly tax and accounting reasons.

by jasode 10y ago

eloff 10y ago

I think that stands to reason, unless the OP wants to argue it's an innate defect of the Chinese as a race - which, to be clear, I don't think anyone is arguing. In outsourcing situations where you replace a highly-skilled and highly-paid worker with a low paid one in another country, you often get predictably bad results. Is it a cultural difference? Is it because of the compensation? Or just the attitudes of the companies involved on both sides and the kind of people they hire? I think like any complex issue, there's no one answer, but that last point sounds particularly convincing.

lettergram 10y ago
I'm arguing that due to networking effects, having decades of tribal knowledge is worth the cost to keep it. Starting anew elsewhere, even with smart people can sometimes take decades to build that knowledge. Look at SF, every company competes in that market for software engineers because that's where the talent is. It's actually a concept explored by the book "The Talent Code", and even explains why so many people from puerto rico (by population) are so amazing at baseball. Everyone plays, everyone looks up to it, and everyone makes everyone else better.
- upquark 10y ago
  This whole discussion is setting off my BS detectors (your comments specifically, dad with HS degree vs 'the Chinese', etc), and to be honest, the whole tribal knowledge thing may be much more wishful thinking than an actual true effect...
  - upquark 10y ago
    Do the esteemed downvoters care to substantiate their position with anything other than "my daddy said so" anecdotes?
- wott 10y ago
  > Look at SF, every company competes in that market for software engineers because that's where the talent is. No, they bring the "talent" (God, I hate this word and what it carries) from everywhere across the country and abroad. They is no tesseract fuelled talent generator device hidden below SF.
  - deathhand 10y ago
    Not a generator per se but a lure. It is a cycle where one feeds the other. People made great things and they needed talent. Talent goes there to hopefully be great those who came before. Repeat ad nauseam.
dv_dt 10y ago
I think it reflects badly on management planning - that they did first order accounting and found savings, but missed second or higher order effects that affected the accounting in significant ways.

lettergram 10y ago

Don't know what to tell you. All I can say, is my dad recieved a hell of an offer to return (and so did his buddies). The people he trained all had PhD's from various universities around the globe and were supposedly excellent material science engineers. My dad had a high school education, but was trained/worked for decades in this particular field. The molds that make every component in a MacBook need to be better than those assembling them. The skill to plug in a keyboard or even run a machine to make a keyboard, is not the same as designing or creating the molds of the keyboard. Apple does all of that (to my knowledge) in the U.S. The reason is likely security of their IP and that they have a critical mass of skilled people here, able to out perform elsewhere. Also, it's easy to ship designs anywhere, not so much material goods.

princetontiger 10y ago
This is super interesting... apparently we have also the lost ability to find specialized welders for many naval vessels... starting salaries are around $300K for the right folks in the US. hell of an offer indeed
bpizzi 10y ago
Only plastic parts really needs a mold to be produced. Metallic parts are produced on machining machines where the real knownledge sits in the ISO programmer head. And plastic parts are more and more reserved for low end product, whereas high end products are all made of metal (think about a plane architecture being made of plastic instead of aluminium: this will not happen soon). So to be honest about your dad situation: from an industrial point of view I think the people outsourcing your dad's job in China were right: they did loose the know-how on keyboards molds and they do face a problem regarding keyboard quality nowadays, but that value gained in outsourcing low end parts was invested in machining technologies with very local jobs garanteed for a long industrial time. I'm sorry about your dad situation in that systemic change, and I'm glad he managed to move to another field, but what's at stake here is really what a was proposed in a parent comment: 'manual' labour being replaced with automation (and human tragedies involved unfortunately...).
- tim333 10y ago

csomar 10y ago

I don't know the OP but I think his father is biased. The story is repeated a lot (The Chinese/Indians/Other-Race are cheaper but can't produce the same!) even for Software developers (Indians). In most cases (at least for the software engineering) the problem turns out that the other-race pay was low, and thus attracted low talent. The company probably wanted to cut costs and picked cheap foreign workers that didn't perform.

Gracana 10y ago
Tool and die making is the height of machining skill, it takes a very good machinist, the right machine, and the right environment. This story doesn't seem unreasonable.
- taivare 10y ago
  Cleveland Oh. was the tool & die capitol of the world those jobs started to leave in the 80's and NAFTA and the Great Recession took the rest especially the small ones in Western Pa. As for Molex the Koch's bought them in 2013 but, I haven't followed where or what they have done with Molex. I have used Molex machines in production they were so well made. When I was a kid Cleveland made everything I remember the pride I felt seeing a dump truck the size of 2 houses ( Euc) roll out of the factory back then. It wasn't my fathers generation Silent (Korea) that sent those jobs out of the country it was the generation that followed them !
fnordfnordfnord 10y ago
That doesn't necessarily make the father biased/racist; but I think you're right about the economic incentives at play. Many of the problems I've encountered with Chinese manufacturing can be traced back to stateside managers/purchasers wanting to relentlessly drive the price down, yet still exert the same kind of QC effort (or less) than they did with their former in-house manufacturing. They (mgmt) failed to recognize a lot of informal QC that might otherwise be lumped in with "work-ethic." They also probably laid off the experienced QC and put a jr level engineer/recent grad "in charge", but with little/no authority to do anything. Meanwhile on the Chinese side, the workers work hard, usually with every effort focused on speed. I remember one specific case where an assembler kept ruining chassis because they wouldn't replace worn screwdrivers for the assemblers. They caused lots of rework simply because the Chinese shop manager was too tight to accept that screwdrivers are consumables. tl;dr Don't rush to blame the workers, they're usually just doing what they've been told to do.

vetinari 10y ago

It's not that a specific person, company or whatever failed. It is systematic - the Chinese or anyone else do not have market for high quality molds (or other tools). The end customers want cheap stuff, the manufacturers that make cheap stuff conversely do want cheap tools... turtles all the way down. That means that the molds/whatever are sitting somewhere in the middle, they have to be cheap too and there are corners being cut to make the target price with being good enough.

dv_dt 10y ago

I think the point is that to get the same quality, you have to look more deeply than just the wages of the given workers. Once you hit that quality, the those workers then step onto the same track of skilled wage growth.

JamesLeonis 10y ago

Consider the opportunity cost on the Chinese factory if they crossed Apple. Apple can take the hit and move to another source, leaving the entire factory out a major customer. Even then, counterfeit iPhones are everywhere in China [1][2]. Compare and contrast with the shenanigans Kickstarters have with contract renegging, stolen IP, and plain old fraud [3]. [1]: http://mashable.com/2016/06/17/apple-china-knockoffs/#j5NyhhG5TPq3 http://mashable.com/2016/06/17/apple-china-knockoffs/#j5Nyhh... [2]: http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-fake-chinese-apple-store-shenzen-kunming-2015-9 http://www.businessinsider.com/inside-fake-chinese-apple-sto... [3]: https://qz.com/771727/chinas-factories-in-shenzhen-can-copy-products-at-breakneck-speed-and-its-time-for-the-rest-of-the-world-to-get-over-it/ https://qz.com/771727/chinas-factories-in-shenzhen-can-copy-...

lawpoop 10y ago

> Were the Molex molds more complicated than that? Probably not, and therefore the manufacturer was looking for rock-bottom prices, and thereby got what they paid for.

princeb 10y ago

> It seems that China workers can make Macbooks and iPhones with high precision and low tolerances thought I read it somewhere that china is literally the only country in the world right now that can do that at scale and change specs as rapidly as apple wants them to.

JabrZer0 10y ago

As far as my (admittedly limited) experience goes, I'd say you're right. I'm currently learning about the intricacies of manufacturing in China through a trial-by-fire of manufacturing some components for our company's first product overseas. We've been told time and time again by advisors, investors, and friends in the industry that it's less money but a whole lot more work. On the surface, you have to manage extra things like shipping and imports. Under the hood, quality control and partner selection are MUCH more in-depth and difficult processes. If you're not working with someone who already has relationships built, and/or if you're not willing to be very hands-on with the process, from what I've been told you're unlikely to get high-quality, low-cost parts. I can definitely imagine someone who is used to dealing with manufacturing in the US having a lot of issues adjusting to the way business is done in China if they didn't know what they were getting themselves into.

DashRattlesnake 10y ago

> It seems that China's workers can make Macbooks and iPhones with high precision and low tolerances according to Apple's specifications. Isn't Apple's high-precision manufacturing highly automated to a level of expense that no one else would try? IIRC, they have acres of automated CNC mills churning out MacBook cases. Apple's manufacturing operation is so unique that it's not generalizable.

c3833174 10y ago
Yes, the Japanese CNC machine manufacturers Apple uses have entire factories dedicated to Apple-bound products. Source: http://atomicdelights.com/blog/why-your-next-iphone-wont-be-ceramic http://atomicdelights.com/blog/why-your-next-iphone-wont-be-...

Spooky23 10y ago

Sure. That capability was built and scaled from the iPod up. Foxconn didn't start building millions of iPhones. They started with thousands of other products. Same thing happened with Dell. They financed factories for Asus to build laptops and walked away from nearly new plants in the US not long ago for mostly tax and accounting reasons.