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Huh, I would have thought constant changes would be easier onshore as it is easier to talk to the factory floor in real time to make the adjustments. Once th

Huh, I would have thought constant changes would be easier onshore as it is easier to talk to the factory floor in real time to make the adjustments. Once that is all sorted out you then send it offshore as it is easily repeatable.

bluGill 5y ago
Labor onshore is expensive. If you only need a few it doesn't matter but once you have offshore labor they are flexible enough to handle changes. Onshore manufacturing implies a large amount of automation, but that automation limits the changes you can make and still fit into the automation. If the change is something that is CNC, then you can make the change easily. However if the change needs a whole new jig, making the jig is more expensive than having a skill machinist make the part by hand with a file - those skilled machinists are cheaper offshore. You pay off the jig over thousands (or millions) of product. Once you have production offshore it is even harder. They may have made a few jigs (not as many as labor is cheap enough to not need them), but and odds are even in the worst case they can re-use all but one of those jigs. Thus once you are offshore it is better to let offshore do the prototype work. It gets far more complex than that.
- baybal2 5y ago
  "Labour" is not expensive in US, in fact it's cheaper than in quite a number of other developed countries, and now South China. Brains, even tiniest amounts of them, are. Read my story above how my first line worker in Canada whom I found to not screw up a completely banal assembly was a 60k+ MEng.
legitster 5y ago
I think people underestimate how much of offshore manufacturing is done by hand still. The cheapness comes from any factory being able to switch to just about any competitive production quickly. But they are much less likely to invest in equipment and automation. At scale, there are also complications, like the cost of training, labor laws, or approving role changes with the union.

bluGill 5y ago

Labor onshore is expensive. If you only need a few it doesn't matter but once you have offshore labor they are flexible enough to handle changes. Onshore manufacturing implies a large amount of automation, but that automation limits the changes you can make and still fit into the automation. If the change is something that is CNC, then you can make the change easily. However if the change needs a whole new jig, making the jig is more expensive than having a skill machinist make the part by hand with a file - those skilled machinists are cheaper offshore. You pay off the jig over thousands (or millions) of product. Once you have production offshore it is even harder. They may have made a few jigs (not as many as labor is cheap enough to not need them), but and odds are even in the worst case they can re-use all but one of those jigs. Thus once you are offshore it is better to let offshore do the prototype work. It gets far more complex than that.

baybal2 5y ago
"Labour" is not expensive in US, in fact it's cheaper than in quite a number of other developed countries, and now South China. Brains, even tiniest amounts of them, are. Read my story above how my first line worker in Canada whom I found to not screw up a completely banal assembly was a 60k+ MEng.

legitster 5y ago

I think people underestimate how much of offshore manufacturing is done by hand still. The cheapness comes from any factory being able to switch to just about any competitive production quickly. But they are much less likely to invest in equipment and automation. At scale, there are also complications, like the cost of training, labor laws, or approving role changes with the union.