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To the question in general: watch American Factory on Netflix for a good documentary on the efforts of spinning up a US based factory. Basically this company fo
by chillacy 6y ago
To the question in general: watch American Factory on Netflix for a good documentary on the efforts of spinning up a US based factory. Basically this company found that American workers were more expensive, had higher safety standards, and quality control was a struggle. In the end the company started to invest in industrial robots for automation.
To this specific case: it's probably to avoid the 22% import duty that India places on products not assembled locally. I suppose the US could pass a similar law.
- skwb 6y agoReally? The message I got from American Factory was that there are stark cultural divides between Chinese and American manufacturing. It's been a while since I saw it, but they made a point to emphasize some of the poor financial decisions the Chinese bosses made during refurbishing (I think an overly expensive stage was built).
- chillacy 6y agoYes, there's no one thing in that documentary but a collection of things which you could chalk up to "differing cultures": * The scene where the plant operators from China dump a bunch of waste improperly * The scene where the plant owner is worried about unionization (though the film contrasts this with the presence of unions in their Chinese plant) * The scene where the plant operators are complaining that the american workers output with higher defect rate and lower speed * The scene where the operators are complaining about the strict safety regulations and the fact that Americans like to take time off on weekends That the plant owner spent tens of thousands of dollars to redo the factory layout is just one example, but it's not more than a few minutes of airtime compared to the quality control and union stories. If these can be put under the umbrella of "cultural differences" then I agree with your assessment.