3 ms·

I don't think this will make much of a difference aside from the branding advantage. The quality of a mass-produced product like a consumer hand tool isn't a fu

by _Adam 4y ago

I don't think this will make much of a difference aside from the branding advantage. The quality of a mass-produced product like a consumer hand tool isn't a function of the country in which it is made but rather of its design. All the decisions made during that process and all the cost / performance considerations made are what determine the ultimate outcome. It's common to blame Chinese manufacturing for cheap tools, but this gets the causation backwards. We wanted cheap tools and sending production overseas was the only way to get them. In fact because less is spent on labor, a better quality product can be had for the same price. So bringing it back here without increasing the cost to the consumer means altering the design to make it cheaper to build, or banking on supply chain efficiencies to make it worthwhile.

kube-system 4y ago
Yes, but it’s a little bit of both because there’s a feedback loop in the demand for a product and the expertise and attitude of a local industry.
moonchrome 4y ago
Thing is a customer is willing to pay disproportionately more for a "reliable" country of origin, brand, whatever - so you can afford to throw in better components/QC on top of higher labor cost etc. Many things are this way - you don't pay premium price for a budget brand even if they end up performing the same as premium brand. Also you don't outsource production to China to get better quality, you outsource to cut cost - that always leads to worse products down the line.
- Aperocky 4y ago
  > always leads to worse products down the line. Counter point: Apple, they seems to be doing just fine. China is not a magical place where there is boundless supply of cheap labor and bad product quality. Execution matters.
googlryas 4y ago
If you ever try to get something built in China, you really need to know what you're doing, or the manufacturer will violate your specs all over the place in order to profit an extra 1/10th of a cent per unit. But, big companies don't really have that excuse, because they should know what they're doing.
- stacktrust 4y ago
  Milwaukee (TTI) is vertically integrated, i.e. they own their factories in China.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > they own their factories in China This isn’t as protective as one would imagine. Unscrupulous floor managers will still swap materials, run the crap and sell the good stuff.
    - stacktrust 4y ago
      Wow. How would floor managers benefit from that kind of swap?
      - umeshunni 4y ago
        They sell the higher spec ones on the side to their buddies?
        stacktrust 4y ago
        Wouldn't the lower spec ones fail QA checks on factory floor?
        AnimalMuppet 4y ago
        Not if the floor manager controls the factory floor QA checks...
BugsJustFindMe 4y ago
> In fact because less is spent on labor, a better quality product can be had for the same price. In theory yes, but in practice it doesn't seem to ever pan out that way. When was the last time a company that moved its manufacturing from the US to China to increase profits didn't also cheap out on materials, quality control, and customer service?
- clhodapp 4y ago
  Apple comes to mind. But yes, it seems very rare.
  - Tao3300 4y ago
    Even they are suspect. The quality of the batteries in MacBooks at our office has been terrible. Lots of them swelling up and splitting the case apart.
    - londons_explore 4y ago
      Battery swelling is rarely poor manufacturing. Nearly always it's poor design of the battery chemistry or battery management system.
    - AlbertCory 4y ago
      Indeed, the quality of the keyboards is lousy these days. A classic case of lack of attention to detail in manufacturing. And this is AFTER they fixed the infamous design flaw on mine: https://thenextweb.com/news/what-hell-apple-butterfly-keyboard-keys-design https://thenextweb.com/news/what-hell-apple-butterfly-keyboa...
cplusplusfellow 4y ago
I tend to disagree with this in many ways. Chinese products are often made from subpar raw materials like steel, which can be much more brittle than steel sourced from US, Germany, and Mexico.
- kube-system 4y ago
  Professionally engineered products have their steel specified by physical attributes, not country of origin. If it meets the spec, and passes QA, it meets the spec. That being said, not every plant makes every type of steel. Higher end steels are the types of steels that western manufacturers can compete on, so it is often what they specialize in.
  - cplusplusfellow 4y ago
    Some countries declare steel to have certain properties and they do not have those properties. This is a certifiable fact.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      Manufacturers can and do test steel for compliance and will demand remediation from suppliers if it exhibits issues. I have first hand experience.
    - nl 4y ago
      > Some countries declare steel to have certain properties and they do not have those properties. This is a certifiable fact. In general I'd say that some companies do this. I did a quick search and found a few well-published incidents: Kobe Steel (Japan)[1] Japan Steel Works (Japan) - although this was faked inspection on manufactured components not raw steel[2] Ossen Innovation Materials (China)[3] Unsubstantiated reports of issues with companies from China, Germany, Italy and the US[4] Le Creusot (France). Fake materials used in nuclear reactors[5] [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kobe-steel-scandal-ceo-idUSKBN1GH2SM https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kobe-steel-scandal-ceo-id... [2] https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14617459 https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14617459 [3] https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/307694/steel-supplier-has-issued-fake-quality-certs https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/307694/steel-supplier-ha... [4] https://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=304464 https://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=304464 [5] https://www.steelavailable.com/en/counterfeit-steel-big-worry-industry/ https://www.steelavailable.com/en/counterfeit-steel-big-worr...
mmsimanga 4y ago
I don't know anything about manufacturing but I wonder if problems associated with outsourcing IT overseas are not also experienced in manufacturing.l? Wouldn't having the factory closer give you same benefits as being able to walk across to a fellow developer and discuss some issue.
- bombcar 4y ago
  This can happen - if the company is setup to allow that. There was some GE product that was brought back in-house next to the developers and the assemblers talking to them shaved 35 steps off manufacturing.
- juve1996 4y ago
  Of course - they can iterate much faster. I know firms in the US that would have to wait 3 months for a prototype to ship for testing. 3 months. Think about how much time is truly wasted?
lumost 4y ago
Is this really true? Cutting quality doesn't buy you much if your cost per unit is primarily driven by labor. If you manufacture in a high cost country, you may be forced to compete on quality.
jbay808 4y ago
> The quality of a mass-produced product like a consumer hand tool isn't a function of the country in which it is made but rather of its design There's a lot more to production quality than just product design. Quality of materials, manufacturing tolerances, heat treatment, surface cleanliness, quality control procedures, tooling wear, order of operations, assembly jig design, and so on. Some of those may be affected by the country in which it's made, and some may not. While you may say those are "design" in that the designer specifies the material they want, whether their product really gets made the way they envision is not always up to them. And even when it comes to just design, I'll say one thing: I have a lot more confidence in the designs produced by designers whose desks are within walking distance of the production line.
doodlebugging 4y ago
>The quality of a mass-produced product like a consumer hand tool isn't a function of the country in which it is made but rather of its design. All the decisions made during that process and all the cost / performance considerations made are what determine the ultimate outcome. I have to disagree with this. The quality of consumer-grade hand tools is a function of who controls the manufacturing process and quality control procedures. It has very little to do with who writes the specs, approves the engineering drawings, or selects the materials. The quality depends on how closely the whole process was monitored and controlled by the entity who is attempting to have the tool produced. If they can't or don't closely watch the process and have robust reject/accept criteria then the tool can appear in the package to be fully up to spec without actually hitting any of the design specs. >It's common to blame Chinese manufacturing for cheap tools, but this gets the causation backwards. This is not true. Blaming Chinese or Indian etc manufacturers is actually pinning the tail in the correct spot on the donkey. As mentioned by at least one other respondent, Chinese manufacturers will substitute inferior materials and violate other specs at will unless you have eyes on the process and the right to test and reject everything out of spec. >We wanted cheap tools and sending production overseas was the only way to get them. In fact because less is spent on labor, a better quality product can be had for the same price. Don't include me in that "we". I had no part as a consumer in the decision to send production overseas. In fact, whenever "we" would go out to buy a new tool or tool set we would always consider where the product was made in the purchasing decision precisely because we had previously bought a tool from a company that had moved production to China or India and later had that tool prematurely fail in normal use. The production location is a strong indicator of quality. Price only comes into the equation when you are purchasing a tool that you may only use once. In that case you are taking a chance that the product will last long enough to finish your task. Harbor Freight mostly sells tools made in China and other foreign countries. Tradesmen take their business to HF because the return policy is lenient enough that if a tool fails you can take it into their store and walk out with a new one in a few minutes after describing the nature of the failure and the reason for the return. Hand tools like drill bits, screwdrivers, allen wrenches, hand wrenches, etc tend not to be as durable as an equivalent 50 year old Craftsman, Proto, S-K, Snap-On, etc. tool. I have watched HF drill bits untwist while trying to drill a hole through a pine 2x4. That is a quality control failure. The false idea that spending less on labor gives the consumer a better product for the same price ignores the reality that it simply doesn't work like that and sounds like something that a person who had never owned or used hand or power tools would say. You might have a career in marketing if you can get enough potential customers drunk enough to believe that shit. >So bringing it back here without increasing the cost to the consumer means altering the design to make it cheaper to build, or banking on supply chain efficiencies to make it worthwhile. One can also alter the production method by using improved tools or techniques and materials. At the end of the day though when your job pays for the tools you will use and requires you to do certain tasks day in and day out then you will find that the employer will frequently have a short list of approved tool vendors so that you will have to pay for a tool that is not on the approved list. This helps insure that techs have durable tools that are fit for purpose and have a proven history of performance so that the company and the techs will not have to constantly replace tools that would not have failed had they chosen more expensive, more reliable brands. Tool branding is everything and people who use tools absolutely care about where they are made and who owns the company making them. Reputation is everything with some things.
thaumaturgy 4y ago
There's a great YouTube channel, Project Farm (https://www.youtube.com/c/ProjectFarm/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/ProjectFarm/videos), that features a single guy testing, grading, and comparing all kinds of things you might find in your garage. He's not sponsored and tries to be objective throughout the process. It isn't perfect but he puts a ton of effort in and for backyard science it's pretty good. Anyway, he mentions country of origin for a lot of tools and there's a clear trend towards better results for items made in the USA. Obviously China is perfectly capable of producing high quality products, but regardless of the details of the causes, the end result is that "made in the USA" is a reliable signal for higher quality products.
- nostromo 4y ago
  China has a “caveat emptor” culture that I suspect plays a role in this. In most western countries and other countries, like Japan, selling counterfeit or barely functional products is seen as somewhat shameful. But in China it’s often seen as being clever or cunning. Chinese consumers are used to this and are very cautious about what they buy and from whom, and of course negotiating a reasonable cost for the goods being sold. In the US and most of the west, consumers feel entitled to a basic standard of quality, even at the lowest prices. This leads to consumers being confused in the west when they buy very cheap goods from China and the quality is crap. Well, yeah, you got what you paid for.
  - collegeburner 4y ago
    yea i've seen the attitude extend to college here, we generally have some idea that cheating is wrong but most of the chinese students i met seemed to think it was fine if they could get away with it.
    - VectorLock 4y ago
      My SO is a professor at a university with a lot of foreign students and she mostly only has to deal with cheating with this cohort of students.
  - 4y ago
SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
>So bringing it back here without increasing the cost to the consumer means altering the design to make it cheaper to build, or banking on supply chain efficiencies to make it worthwhile. As much as I like some Klein tools that are made in the USA, they have a few that are cheaper-quality when compared to their cheaper-price Chinese alternatives. If I can’t find USA, I’ll at least look to Taiwan, having spent time there and seen how hard the people work.
- bluGill 4y ago
  When I was a kid Taiwan was the place they made junk tools that broke. 40 some years later they have figured out quality. I expect China to figure it out, and in some places they have.
systemvoltage 4y ago
> The quality of a mass-produced product like a consumer hand tool isn't a function of the country in which it is made but rather of its design. The point isn't about quality, the point is about having manufacturing capacity to turn these places from making tools to making aircraft parts in a pinch when shit hits the fan. Having domestic manufacturing capacity of the shittiest tools is far better than only having designers that'd twiddle their thumbs in war time, not knowing how to setup high volume manufacturing capability quickly. Most people here do not understand how difficult it is to make literally anything in high volume. Take the simplest thing like a puck of aluminum. Now, try establishing a manufacturing chain that can make 8 million of these per week. You'd be on your knees trying to make 1k a week, let alone 8 million. We're note even talking about having SPC or other systems that monitor quality. HVM is the most underappreciated aspect of engineering by far and it is trivialized by clueless media. Even the most educated people appreciate design over manufacturing.
AlbertCory 4y ago
> The quality of a mass-produced product like a consumer hand tool isn't a function of the country in which it is made but rather of its design. I don't think you've read all the posts by people with actual experience in manufacturing. Give the same "design" to two different factories and you get two different results. Manufacturing matters.
- eru 4y ago
  Though I wouldn't necessarily blame it directly on country. Rather on culture. As an example, manufacturing in southern Italy vs norther Italy might be rather different, too.
bamboozled 4y ago
Who actually wanted / needed cheap tools ? Cheap tools were pushed on the majority of people.
- prawn 4y ago
  People who need to DIY something but might only need to use the tool a few times. Or people who bought decent brand for key tools and then went budget to add a couple of extra pieces they couldn't otherwise justify. How are cheaper tools pushed on people? There's a broad range at the hardware store and generally staff will encourage you to purchase premium brands.
  - bamboozled 4y ago
    At least my experience was, about 15-20 years back. All my local hardware stores were destroyed by bigger conglomerate stores. They came into many towns, built huge stores, pushed cheaper products which crushed the competition (who sold good tools) then pushed cheap junk on most people which just ends up in landfill. These stores didn't just sell tools, they helped DIY people know which tools to buy. That is how.
dehrmann 4y ago
> It's common to blame Chinese manufacturing for cheap tools Apple has shown exactly this: you get what you pay for in China, just like everywhere else. If you want quality and consistency, you can get it in China. It just costs more than low-quality from China.
- PeterisP 4y ago
  The example of Apple does not show that you can simply buy quality and consistency in China, Apple's process shows that you can get quality and consistency in China by doing extensive integration and ensuring in-depth control over your suppliers' daily operations in China, not simply by paying more.

by _Adam 4y ago

kube-system 4y ago

Yes, but it’s a little bit of both because there’s a feedback loop in the demand for a product and the expertise and attitude of a local industry.

moonchrome 4y ago

Thing is a customer is willing to pay disproportionately more for a "reliable" country of origin, brand, whatever - so you can afford to throw in better components/QC on top of higher labor cost etc. Many things are this way - you don't pay premium price for a budget brand even if they end up performing the same as premium brand. Also you don't outsource production to China to get better quality, you outsource to cut cost - that always leads to worse products down the line.

Aperocky 4y ago
> always leads to worse products down the line. Counter point: Apple, they seems to be doing just fine. China is not a magical place where there is boundless supply of cheap labor and bad product quality. Execution matters.

googlryas 4y ago

If you ever try to get something built in China, you really need to know what you're doing, or the manufacturer will violate your specs all over the place in order to profit an extra 1/10th of a cent per unit. But, big companies don't really have that excuse, because they should know what they're doing.

stacktrust 4y ago
Milwaukee (TTI) is vertically integrated, i.e. they own their factories in China.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > they own their factories in China This isn’t as protective as one would imagine. Unscrupulous floor managers will still swap materials, run the crap and sell the good stuff.
  - stacktrust 4y ago
    Wow. How would floor managers benefit from that kind of swap?
    - umeshunni 4y ago
      They sell the higher spec ones on the side to their buddies?
      - stacktrust 4y ago
        Wouldn't the lower spec ones fail QA checks on factory floor?
        AnimalMuppet 4y ago
        Not if the floor manager controls the factory floor QA checks...

BugsJustFindMe 4y ago

> In fact because less is spent on labor, a better quality product can be had for the same price. In theory yes, but in practice it doesn't seem to ever pan out that way. When was the last time a company that moved its manufacturing from the US to China to increase profits didn't also cheap out on materials, quality control, and customer service?

clhodapp 4y ago
Apple comes to mind. But yes, it seems very rare.
- Tao3300 4y ago
  Even they are suspect. The quality of the batteries in MacBooks at our office has been terrible. Lots of them swelling up and splitting the case apart.
  - londons_explore 4y ago
    Battery swelling is rarely poor manufacturing. Nearly always it's poor design of the battery chemistry or battery management system.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    Indeed, the quality of the keyboards is lousy these days. A classic case of lack of attention to detail in manufacturing. And this is AFTER they fixed the infamous design flaw on mine: https://thenextweb.com/news/what-hell-apple-butterfly-keyboard-keys-design https://thenextweb.com/news/what-hell-apple-butterfly-keyboa...

cplusplusfellow 4y ago

I tend to disagree with this in many ways. Chinese products are often made from subpar raw materials like steel, which can be much more brittle than steel sourced from US, Germany, and Mexico.

kube-system 4y ago
Professionally engineered products have their steel specified by physical attributes, not country of origin. If it meets the spec, and passes QA, it meets the spec. That being said, not every plant makes every type of steel. Higher end steels are the types of steels that western manufacturers can compete on, so it is often what they specialize in.
- cplusplusfellow 4y ago
  Some countries declare steel to have certain properties and they do not have those properties. This is a certifiable fact.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    Manufacturers can and do test steel for compliance and will demand remediation from suppliers if it exhibits issues. I have first hand experience.
  - nl 4y ago
    > Some countries declare steel to have certain properties and they do not have those properties. This is a certifiable fact. In general I'd say that some companies do this. I did a quick search and found a few well-published incidents: Kobe Steel (Japan)[1] Japan Steel Works (Japan) - although this was faked inspection on manufactured components not raw steel[2] Ossen Innovation Materials (China)[3] Unsubstantiated reports of issues with companies from China, Germany, Italy and the US[4] Le Creusot (France). Fake materials used in nuclear reactors[5] [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kobe-steel-scandal-ceo-idUSKBN1GH2SM https://www.reuters.com/article/us-kobe-steel-scandal-ceo-id... [2] https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14617459 https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14617459 [3] https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/307694/steel-supplier-has-issued-fake-quality-certs https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/307694/steel-supplier-ha... [4] https://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=304464 https://www.eng-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=304464 [5] https://www.steelavailable.com/en/counterfeit-steel-big-worry-industry/ https://www.steelavailable.com/en/counterfeit-steel-big-worr...

mmsimanga 4y ago

I don't know anything about manufacturing but I wonder if problems associated with outsourcing IT overseas are not also experienced in manufacturing.l? Wouldn't having the factory closer give you same benefits as being able to walk across to a fellow developer and discuss some issue.

bombcar 4y ago
This can happen - if the company is setup to allow that. There was some GE product that was brought back in-house next to the developers and the assemblers talking to them shaved 35 steps off manufacturing.
juve1996 4y ago
Of course - they can iterate much faster. I know firms in the US that would have to wait 3 months for a prototype to ship for testing. 3 months. Think about how much time is truly wasted?

lumost 4y ago

Is this really true? Cutting quality doesn't buy you much if your cost per unit is primarily driven by labor. If you manufacture in a high cost country, you may be forced to compete on quality.

jbay808 4y ago

> The quality of a mass-produced product like a consumer hand tool isn't a function of the country in which it is made but rather of its design There's a lot more to production quality than just product design. Quality of materials, manufacturing tolerances, heat treatment, surface cleanliness, quality control procedures, tooling wear, order of operations, assembly jig design, and so on. Some of those may be affected by the country in which it's made, and some may not. While you may say those are "design" in that the designer specifies the material they want, whether their product really gets made the way they envision is not always up to them. And even when it comes to just design, I'll say one thing: I have a lot more confidence in the designs produced by designers whose desks are within walking distance of the production line.

doodlebugging 4y ago

>The quality of a mass-produced product like a consumer hand tool isn't a function of the country in which it is made but rather of its design. All the decisions made during that process and all the cost / performance considerations made are what determine the ultimate outcome. I have to disagree with this. The quality of consumer-grade hand tools is a function of who controls the manufacturing process and quality control procedures. It has very little to do with who writes the specs, approves the engineering drawings, or selects the materials. The quality depends on how closely the whole process was monitored and controlled by the entity who is attempting to have the tool produced. If they can't or don't closely watch the process and have robust reject/accept criteria then the tool can appear in the package to be fully up to spec without actually hitting any of the design specs. >It's common to blame Chinese manufacturing for cheap tools, but this gets the causation backwards. This is not true. Blaming Chinese or Indian etc manufacturers is actually pinning the tail in the correct spot on the donkey. As mentioned by at least one other respondent, Chinese manufacturers will substitute inferior materials and violate other specs at will unless you have eyes on the process and the right to test and reject everything out of spec. >We wanted cheap tools and sending production overseas was the only way to get them. In fact because less is spent on labor, a better quality product can be had for the same price. Don't include me in that "we". I had no part as a consumer in the decision to send production overseas. In fact, whenever "we" would go out to buy a new tool or tool set we would always consider where the product was made in the purchasing decision precisely because we had previously bought a tool from a company that had moved production to China or India and later had that tool prematurely fail in normal use. The production location is a strong indicator of quality. Price only comes into the equation when you are purchasing a tool that you may only use once. In that case you are taking a chance that the product will last long enough to finish your task. Harbor Freight mostly sells tools made in China and other foreign countries. Tradesmen take their business to HF because the return policy is lenient enough that if a tool fails you can take it into their store and walk out with a new one in a few minutes after describing the nature of the failure and the reason for the return. Hand tools like drill bits, screwdrivers, allen wrenches, hand wrenches, etc tend not to be as durable as an equivalent 50 year old Craftsman, Proto, S-K, Snap-On, etc. tool. I have watched HF drill bits untwist while trying to drill a hole through a pine 2x4. That is a quality control failure. The false idea that spending less on labor gives the consumer a better product for the same price ignores the reality that it simply doesn't work like that and sounds like something that a person who had never owned or used hand or power tools would say. You might have a career in marketing if you can get enough potential customers drunk enough to believe that shit. >So bringing it back here without increasing the cost to the consumer means altering the design to make it cheaper to build, or banking on supply chain efficiencies to make it worthwhile. One can also alter the production method by using improved tools or techniques and materials. At the end of the day though when your job pays for the tools you will use and requires you to do certain tasks day in and day out then you will find that the employer will frequently have a short list of approved tool vendors so that you will have to pay for a tool that is not on the approved list. This helps insure that techs have durable tools that are fit for purpose and have a proven history of performance so that the company and the techs will not have to constantly replace tools that would not have failed had they chosen more expensive, more reliable brands. Tool branding is everything and people who use tools absolutely care about where they are made and who owns the company making them. Reputation is everything with some things.

thaumaturgy 4y ago

There's a great YouTube channel, Project Farm (https://www.youtube.com/c/ProjectFarm/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/ProjectFarm/videos), that features a single guy testing, grading, and comparing all kinds of things you might find in your garage. He's not sponsored and tries to be objective throughout the process. It isn't perfect but he puts a ton of effort in and for backyard science it's pretty good. Anyway, he mentions country of origin for a lot of tools and there's a clear trend towards better results for items made in the USA. Obviously China is perfectly capable of producing high quality products, but regardless of the details of the causes, the end result is that "made in the USA" is a reliable signal for higher quality products.

nostromo 4y ago
China has a “caveat emptor” culture that I suspect plays a role in this. In most western countries and other countries, like Japan, selling counterfeit or barely functional products is seen as somewhat shameful. But in China it’s often seen as being clever or cunning. Chinese consumers are used to this and are very cautious about what they buy and from whom, and of course negotiating a reasonable cost for the goods being sold. In the US and most of the west, consumers feel entitled to a basic standard of quality, even at the lowest prices. This leads to consumers being confused in the west when they buy very cheap goods from China and the quality is crap. Well, yeah, you got what you paid for.
- collegeburner 4y ago
  yea i've seen the attitude extend to college here, we generally have some idea that cheating is wrong but most of the chinese students i met seemed to think it was fine if they could get away with it.
  - VectorLock 4y ago
    My SO is a professor at a university with a lot of foreign students and she mostly only has to deal with cheating with this cohort of students.
- 4y ago

SV_BubbleTime 4y ago

>So bringing it back here without increasing the cost to the consumer means altering the design to make it cheaper to build, or banking on supply chain efficiencies to make it worthwhile. As much as I like some Klein tools that are made in the USA, they have a few that are cheaper-quality when compared to their cheaper-price Chinese alternatives. If I can’t find USA, I’ll at least look to Taiwan, having spent time there and seen how hard the people work.

bluGill 4y ago
When I was a kid Taiwan was the place they made junk tools that broke. 40 some years later they have figured out quality. I expect China to figure it out, and in some places they have.

systemvoltage 4y ago

> The quality of a mass-produced product like a consumer hand tool isn't a function of the country in which it is made but rather of its design. The point isn't about quality, the point is about having manufacturing capacity to turn these places from making tools to making aircraft parts in a pinch when shit hits the fan. Having domestic manufacturing capacity of the shittiest tools is far better than only having designers that'd twiddle their thumbs in war time, not knowing how to setup high volume manufacturing capability quickly. Most people here do not understand how difficult it is to make literally anything in high volume. Take the simplest thing like a puck of aluminum. Now, try establishing a manufacturing chain that can make 8 million of these per week. You'd be on your knees trying to make 1k a week, let alone 8 million. We're note even talking about having SPC or other systems that monitor quality. HVM is the most underappreciated aspect of engineering by far and it is trivialized by clueless media. Even the most educated people appreciate design over manufacturing.

AlbertCory 4y ago

> The quality of a mass-produced product like a consumer hand tool isn't a function of the country in which it is made but rather of its design. I don't think you've read all the posts by people with actual experience in manufacturing. Give the same "design" to two different factories and you get two different results. Manufacturing matters.

eru 4y ago
Though I wouldn't necessarily blame it directly on country. Rather on culture. As an example, manufacturing in southern Italy vs norther Italy might be rather different, too.

bamboozled 4y ago

Who actually wanted / needed cheap tools ? Cheap tools were pushed on the majority of people.

prawn 4y ago
People who need to DIY something but might only need to use the tool a few times. Or people who bought decent brand for key tools and then went budget to add a couple of extra pieces they couldn't otherwise justify. How are cheaper tools pushed on people? There's a broad range at the hardware store and generally staff will encourage you to purchase premium brands.
- bamboozled 4y ago
  At least my experience was, about 15-20 years back. All my local hardware stores were destroyed by bigger conglomerate stores. They came into many towns, built huge stores, pushed cheaper products which crushed the competition (who sold good tools) then pushed cheap junk on most people which just ends up in landfill. These stores didn't just sell tools, they helped DIY people know which tools to buy. That is how.

dehrmann 4y ago

> It's common to blame Chinese manufacturing for cheap tools Apple has shown exactly this: you get what you pay for in China, just like everywhere else. If you want quality and consistency, you can get it in China. It just costs more than low-quality from China.

PeterisP 4y ago
The example of Apple does not show that you can simply buy quality and consistency in China, Apple's process shows that you can get quality and consistency in China by doing extensive integration and ensuring in-depth control over your suppliers' daily operations in China, not simply by paying more.